Children no longer need to leave Gaza for cancer treatment
Cancer patients welcome a new cancer ward in Gaza and hope it will ease the travel pains of hundreds of Palestinian child patients and their families.
When 6-year-old Deema al-Shaqar from Gaza's Khan Yunis kept getting headaches and high fevers, her family finally decided in March 2018 to seek professional medical advice. Doctors concluded after lab tests that she had leukemia and referred her to the Huda Al Masri Pediatric Cancer Department, an oncology center for Palestinian children with a modern cancer ward at Al-Hussein Government Hospital.
The problem is that this hospital is in the West Bank city of Beit Jala. There are no cancer treatment centers for children in Gaza, meaning that Deema's family members must get a permit from Israel to travel — where they are searched at the Erez checkpoint — and then repeat this process for each round of Deema's chemotherapy.
