The United States Agency for International Development established the $35 million Maram project in June 2001 to improve the health of Palestinian families with special emphasis on women and children. Intrah was named one of the partners in Maram – which is the largest health development project in the West Bank and Gaza today.
The recent month, however, has brought severe health-care challenges to the West Bank and Gaza, and the Maram project has worked to respond effectively.
“We are operating in a crisis scenario,” said Hammouda Bellamine, Intrah’s director of performance improvement and training for Maram. “We can no longer access the areas where we work, civilian casualties are increasing, and the infrastructure of our target communities is breaking down.”
Bellamine’s office is located in Ramallah, West Bank, where hospitals have lost water and electricity several times in the last month. As a result, civilians must negotiate multiple roadblocks to reach the nearest functioning hospital. Women with labor complications are among those who have lost their lives as a result of road closures or hours-long delays for ambulances at checkpoints.
Intrah officials said that for the next six months, Intrah will focus on the following priorities to respond to the crisis through Maram:
- Emergency obstetric care to reduce the number of deaths of laboring women in transit to hospitals.
- Emergency medical equipment and aid for civilians.
- Distance learning programs to provide rapid technical support to frontline care providers.
The Maram project has established a temporary office in Jerusalem to pursue these goals.
Intrah is implementing the emergency health-care program in close collaboration with experts at UNC’s schools of medicine and nursing, Injury Prevention Research Center and Med World.
Bellamine was scheduled to host representatives from the Ministry of Health and nongovernmental agencies at Maram’s Gaza office the week of April 15. Instead, he is spending that week in Chapel Hill, coordinating Intrah’s emergency response strategy with specialists from the UNC School of Medicine, including the departments of emergency medicine, family medicine and surgery, as well as the School of Nursing, Injury Prevention Research Center and Med World.
Intrah has worked from its base in the UNC School of Medicine for more than 20 years to improve the quality and accessibility of health care around the world. In 2000, the United States Agency for International Development selected Intrah to head Prime II, a five-year, $88-million worldwide project in reproductive health and family planning.
Coverage note: Hammouda Bellamine available for interviews through April 22. For biographical information on Bellamine or to schedule an interview with him, contact David Nelson in Intrah’s communications department at (919) 962-6846.
Intrah contact: David Nelson at (919) 962-6846
News Services contact: Deb Saine at (919) 962-8415