"Accessible Healthcare for the Palestinian Refugees in the Marka Camp in Jordan"
I traveled to Jordan with the intention of conducting a comparative study of the healthcare services available to Palestinian refugees, versus Palestinian displaced persons. After a few weeks in the camps I realized that finding specific information on displaced persons was near impossible; they were not a large minority in the camps, and many of them are not even registered as Palestinian refugees. Due to the difficulty in finding data on displaced persons, and due to the time constraints on my research, I decided to focus on the healthcare services of Baqa'a camp, the largest camp in the Middle East.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is an organization that was founded in 1948 to provide health care services, social services, housing, and education to Palestinians fleeing Palestine during the 1948 war. I developed a six- page survey to collect information focusing on: satisfaction with UNRWA healthcare services, use of non-UNRWA healthcare services, camp sanitation, and socio-economic status. I conducted approximately eighty surveys. Most of my surveys turned into interviews because many of the older generation of Palestinians are illiterate. My survey became the voice for the Palestinian refugees of Jordan, as Palestinians of all ages eagerly awaited me to approach them to hand them this survey, hoping to take advantage of any opportunity voice their concerns. Some refugees did not even want a survey, but someone to listen to them complain of the deficient healthcare services provided by the UN, as well as someone with which they could discuss the impact of their own financial situation on their accessibility to better healthcare.
I later conducted interviews at the Jordanian Red Crescent Society, UNRWA Headquarters, and Save the Children Amman with the purpose of discovering the role of Jordanian NGOs in the camps. At the UNRWA I interviewed the Chief of the Health program, and the Special Hardship Case director. From them I learned that the UNRWA was the sole organization responsible for all Palestinian refugees, and it had been the case for the past 58 years. Other organizations, such as UNICEF, helped only with a few minor, sporadically placed initiatives.
According to UNRWA, all Palestinian refugees receive free primary healthcare (with the exception of Gazans), yet the adequacy of this healthcare is debatable. For example, when I asked several type 1 and type II diabetic patients if the UNRWA had provided them a personal blood sugar meter, or if they had enough money to purchase their own, they looked at me quizzically. Why should they need their own machine when they check their sugar once a month at the UNRWA clinic? The idea of owning their own machine was so absurd because it had never been brought up as a possibility to them. To a Palestinian refugee the presence of the clinic was a blessing in their lives, anything more would seem unnecessary. I began to thank God day and night that my diabetic brother at home had his own sugar machine, and a regular supply of insulin needles.
Through the stories I heard, I began to realize that it was not proper diagnosis of most diseases and illnesses that the refugees needed, it was treatment. They need wheelchairs, glasses, blood sugar meters, blood pressure machines, crutches, etc; all things that the UN did not provide, all things that most refugees could ever hope to afford.
By the end of my trip, I knew exactly what my next step would be: to use my research to go to various organizations, such as Wheelchairs for Life and Direct Relief International, and convince them of the necessity to donate medical devices to the health centers in the refugee camps of Jordan. I want to be the voice for these Palestinian refugees in America.