CARE and the Government of Germany Send Emergency Medical Assistance to the Gaza Strip


Translated from WAFA
29 May 2008
1:15 PM

Ramallah. 29 May 2008. CARE International, in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry of Germany, started sending the first shipment of emergency medical assistance, worth Euro 220,000. The medicine is likely to reach Gaza this coming Monday, and it will be completed by the end of June. The German assistance package is worth approximately Euro 2,000,000.

Ayman Shuaibi, CARE’s Field Operations Manager, said the medical assistance package consists of 34 types of basic medicines for the treatment of diseases that are chronic or contagious, in addition to cancer, and that the shipment includes as well 37 types of medical supplies not available in the Gaza Strip. The medical supplies will support the Gaza warehouses of the Ministry of Health, and seven hospitals: namely Al-Shifa’, Al-Nasr, Kamal Adwan, Beit Hanoun, Al-Aqsa, Abu Yusef Al-Najjar, and the Gaza European Hospital.

During the press conference, Gudrun Isphording, Deputy Head of the Representative Office of Germany, expressed her hope that the assistance offered will ease even a little bit the hardship and negation from which the residents of the Gaza Strip are suffering, in light of the shortage in medical supplies, and the difficult conditions in the health sector because of the siege. Isphording noted the joint effort by the Palestinian Authority and the Government of German to deliver the medical supplies.

Dr. Omar Al-Nasr, Director General of Public Relations in the Ministry of Health, said the Ministry is keen to provide medicine to those who need it in Gaza, and he said the Ministry is working to provide such needs in cooperation with the donor countries or from the Palestinian Authority itself.