By Omar Ghraieb in Gaza | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz
A swine flu (H1N1) patient hospitalized in Gaza.
Their sense of assurance ended on December 6th when the first swine flu patient died in Gaza. People here were over whelmed with mixed feelings of fear blended with shock.
This death hit them hard because at that time the virus was not talked about as much in other places in the world and the number of swine flu fatalities was decreasing.
With this death came the news that occupied Gaza could suffer even more.
Given the lack of medicine, the dense population, a general lack of information, inadequate ill-equipped hospitals, no professional quarantine spaces are available, and not being able to evacuate from the strip for treatment has led Gazans to think that any patient of H1N1 will automatically die.
After the first death announcement on December 6, bad news started to flow like the dirty water canals.
With many new cases of suspected swine flu infection began the horrifying, though unsubstantiated, rumor that a large numbers of Palestinians were dying when getting their treatments in Israel.
The local community read the press release of the Gazan Ministry of Health which stated:
A large number of people are already infected but many of them don’t know yet.
The H1N1 vaccine has not and may not arrive in Gaza – and Tamiflu is not widely available.
Many deaths are most likely to occur because of the virus.
As everywhere, the flu is most dangerous to pregnant women, the elderly, children, and people with weak immune systems.
Gaza is at risk because of returning pilgrims from Mecca where Muslims from around the world have gone to finish their pilgrimage rituals may have caught the virus. In addition, many foreigners enter Gaza either to work here in one of the countless NGOs or to show the support.
People here started to panic as they searched for any information on how to prevent the spread of the H1N1 virus – how to fight it and how to kill it.
Merchants stepped in to help people get their prevention tools, but in fact they were benefiting from the panic and ignorance – a general lack of information about the virus.
Gazans were offered various remedies such as anise and Spanish garlic. Within days, anise vanished from Gaza due to the demand.
With pharmacies here promoting Spanish garlic as “H1N1’s most powerful prevention tool,†the panic and ignorance continued.
A few days ago we woke up to the most shocking alleged news: it is now said that swine flu has been in Gaza for at least the last six months and Gazans were not informed.
Sources here began to confirm that indeed many infants and children have died in the past six months and they were diagnosed with “weirdly powerful flu†or “weirdly powerful pneumonia†without looking further and digging deeper in the cases and the truth was left untold.
We didn’t know whether this virus spread was covered up – or our health officials could not grasp its meaning without developed medical and diagnostic tools here in Gaza.
We do know that the first death was discovered only when the family persisted on performing a very detailed autopsy in which the virus infection was suspected and found, triggering the whole H1N1 frenzy here.
People at first stayed in their homes to avoid going out in public, but slowly the panic is disappearing and life is returning to normal in Gaza.
Not completely normal because life in Gaza has not been normal for decades. That does not mean people are not afraid anymore, but now they know more. They can move on with what is left of their lives, taking their precautions.
It is hard for us to believe that swine flu is now in Gaza. But we are coping. Most infected patients here have now stabilized.
The good news for us all is that the H1N1 virus is ultimately nothing but a regular flu that we can both prevent and fight. We will overcome this health epidemic as we have overcome all other adversities.
* Omar Ghraieb is a Palestinian reporter/journalist/writer/peace seeker living in Gaza and trying to shed a light on what happens there.
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