Foreign medical delegations visit Gaza to try to help fragile health sector
Since the end of the recent war that saw Israeli strikes devastate the Gaza Strip, health delegations have been flocking into Gaza in the hopes of helping revive the health sector that already had been ailing due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Mohammed Rajab is a 27-year-old young man from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip who suffered from kidney failure and required a kidney transplant. He wanted the transplant to be carried out inside the Gaza Strip.
This surgery depended on the arrival of a Jordanian medical delegation that has regularly visited Gaza over the years to perform kidney transplants for patients. But starting in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic repeatedly delayed the arrival of the Jordanian delegation to Gaza.
But after the Israeli-Gaza war ended May 21, coupled with an easing of restrictive measures imposed to stem the spread of the coronavirus, a number of health delegations flocked to Gaza in the hopes of reviving the enclave’s fragile health sector. The delegations included experts in complex operations such as neurosurgery, cardiac surgery and orthopedic surgery, among others.
The Jordanian delegation that Rajab had been waiting for was among the delegations that recently arrived in Gaza. Along with four other patients, Rajab underwent a kidney transplant at the hands of the delegation led by famous doctor Walid Massoud. On July 2, Rajab received a kidney donated by his father in the major operating room of Dar al-Shifa Medical Center in Gaza City.
