By Nicole Johnston

As you approach Gaza's main dump by road you see a massive wall of trash looming over the plain.

It's crawling with around one hundred scavenger dogs and dozens of poor children, combing through the trash for anything they can sell.

In this cesspit of disease is 20 percent of all the donated medicine Gaza has received since the end of the January 2009 war with Israel.

The Health Ministry in the deposed government of Hamas and the World Health Organisation say this aid had already expired or was close to expiring, before it arrived in Gaza.

So now officials are left with the job of disposing of it. But how? Gaza doesn't have the proper facilities to do it, so it's dumped in a landfill and bulldozed along with the rest of the garbage.

Millions of dollars of aid – going to waste.

Men use their bare hands to push boxes of medicine off the back of a truck, into the dump. The stench is disgusting and flies are everywhere.

Not only are donors sending expired medicine, the Health Ministry says most of the aid they receive is unsuitable, poor quality, and the wrong types of drugs.

As for medical equipment, doctors say it's often outdated, up to 10 years old, broken, and incompatible with the local electricity supply.

In total, the Ministry claims they have to dispose of 70 percent of all the medical aid they've received in the last 18 months.

A dumping ground for aid?

One doctor told us he believes Gaza has become a dumping ground for aid. But Gaza isn't alone. He says sometimes medicine is sent to El Arish in Egypt, before going overland to Gaza. When Gaza’s officials are told it's expired, they reject it, and it's then sent to Darfur in Sudan!

The Health Ministry says two months ago it received $2 million worth of Tamiflu drugs for the H1N1 virus, enough for a third of Gaza's population. The ministry didn't want these drugs, saying the H1N1 threat had passed. So the Tamiflu is also in the rubbish dump now.

They also say sometimes donors send huge supplies of drugs, more than Gaza could use in five years. Unable to get through it all, it expires and has to be dumped.

Co-ordination with Hamas

Dr Ehab Hjazi, the Head of the Donations Committee in the Health Ministry for the deposed government of Hamas, says if countries and organisations co-ordinated with the ministry directly, they would find out exactly what Gaza needs. And the list is long. Hospitals are critically short of 115 drugs, including antibiotics and cancer drugs.

But while Hamas is listed in many countries as a 'terrorist' group, donors' hands are tied. If they deal with Hamas, they risk being banned and losing their funding.

However, donors can find out what Gaza needs from the World Health Organisation.

So it''s time for the international community to get it right.

Sending millions of dollars worth of aid may give a country or Non Government Organisation (NGO) some positive short-term publicity. But if it's ending up in landfill where children and dogs sift through it, then it's more than a problem for the people of Gaza, it's an insult.

Source: Al Jazeera

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.

By Omar Ghraieb *

Some times "living on a dime" is just an expression we use when we are cutting some stuff off or maybe running some savings but for some people in some places this expression can be a literally a style of living.

As we all know the world is divided into three parts: first world countries, second world countries and third world countries. Therefore, poverty rates differ between each division due to many political, social, strategic, cultural, economical and local states and situations.

Many countries have very high poverty rates where people have to live on scratch and just find ways to go through their daily life, feed their children, bathe them, put them to sleep in a safe place and find some clothes for them to wear when it sounds impossible to do all that. However, people use their minds because "need is the mother of all inventions" and manage to do some or all of that daily.

Palestine isn’t really different from any other third world country and also suffers from poverty rates, although it witnessed a huge increase in the last eight years according to the various events that came through.

Gaza strip is a small part of Palestine that extends on the coast, it's considered as one of the most densely populated places, and it suffers from very high rates of poverty and un-employment.

The strip has three main commercial ports that allow goods, materials, medical aid, building tools, food to enter. Unfortunately, they stay closed most of the time because of the political situation that we suffer from which leaves all gazans living on a dime whether they chose it or not.

No electricity, no fuel, no food, no water, no medicine and no life is our daily life here in Gaza but life can't stop, it just has to go on and gazans make sure that happens.

New fuel formula: they came up with a fuel formula that the world didn’t know before; they mix the cooking oil along with gasoline at very accurate percentages and come up with a fuel that can make cars work perfectly.
Advantages: it's very cheap as the people turn to the falafel shops and restaurants to take a huge tank of used cooking oil for half a dollar.
Disadvantages: it produces huge amounts of smokes that pollutes the air and causes the car some damage on the very long run.

Cooking tools: they even invented cooking tools and ovens that work using the same formula.
Advantages: it's very powerful and takes no time to cook plus the formula is very cheap.
Disadvantages: It produces very high heat that no one can stand plus it's very dangerous to start and operate.

Light bulbs and heating system: using the same formula you can also have a light bulb which is very useful due to the constant electricity outages plus a heating system that comes handy in winter.
Advantages: cheap sources of light and heat.
Disadvantages: It produces polluted smoke plus it's dangerous to operate and start.

Small (but effective) electric cooking tools: Cooking tools that depend on electricity to produce a huge amount of heat in no time using iron as the main component in manufacturing them.
Advantages: cooks in no time, very small and doesn’t take any space and very cheap (very affordable).
Disadvantages: the electricity is out most of the time, which makes the electric tools useless, very dangerous and contains naked wires.

Living tents: it's not an invention but they coped with living in tents like living in houses due to the demolish of their own homes.
Advantages: better than living in the street, a place to live and sleep in and without monthly rent payments.
Disadvantages: It doesn't protect from the rain, can burn while cooking, very hot in the morning and cold in the night, strained dogs can bite through it and hurt the whole family, and doesn’t apply as a healthy living place.

Gazans live on scratch literally, they use wood and flammable materials to make fire, tents to live in, any edible things for food, public or nearby faucets for water or children's bathing and dish washing, the beach to bathe their children and wash their clothes and dishes, sleep on the floor, and any kind of cloth to sew and stitch for their children to wear.

"Living on a dime" has a whole new sensation here in the Gaza strip that you have to come, see, feel and experience yourself.

* Omar Ghraieb is a 22 years reporter/journalist/writer/peace seeker living in Gaza – Palestine and trying to shed a light on what happens there.

Medicine goes beyond political boundaries. At least this is what the International and Israeli media claims when it comes to Iran and an Iranian boy suffering from brain cancer seeking treatment in Israel and got approval to undergo surgery there.

That's great! By all means this makes everyone feel happy because at the end we are all humans and deserve equal treatment.

But not all stories have happy endings! Just few hundred kilometres south of tel Aviv, a task force of Israeli doctors was banned from entering the Gaza Strip. Although it sound like a joke, but it's not. This is what Israel is all about. Hypocrisy and racism!

To add insult to injury, the MSM played (as usual) the major role in this propaganda. A quick search in google news reveals this fact. Searching for "Iranian in Israel for treatment" revealed 139 results. To name some:
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Telegraph.co.uk
Los Angeles Times
International Herald Tribune
The Associated Press
etc...

On the other hand, searching for "Delegation of Israeli doctors to Gaza denied entry" revealed ONLY 6 results. That is a ratio of 1:0.04 (of course the Iranian story is 1, and 0.04 is Gaza story).

Of course the life of the Iranian boy is as important as the Gazan's, but not for the International community and israel. Not even worth mentioning in the MSM.

Need I say more?

Gaza Strip, December, 14, 2007, (PCAS)- Palestinian Medical sources reported today, Friday, that a new infant child died due to siege. The infant baby died after Israeli occupation banded her from traveling for treatment abroad!

The sources told PCAS that Hala Zanon, a 3-month-baby, had a severe disease since her birth. Her family tried hard to get her outside for treatment, yet she was prevented several times until she died.

The number of dead patients rise up to 38 individuals due to occupation harsh closure imposed on Gaza Strip.

A long list of patients are waiting death as there are no enough medicines and opened crossings to travel for treatment. Nevertheless, Israeli occupation is still violating International conventions and charts obviously.

The ongoing crime of preventing medicines will affect all sick people, especially the seriously ill ones. " this is a humanitarian crime against innocent civilians. We call upon the free world to put an en end for this illegal siege." PCAS said.

It's remarkable that Israel is collectively punishing all people in Gaza Strip since several months. The fragile economy of Gaza Strip collapsed and more than half of Gazans live under poverty line.

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اللجنة الشعبية لمواجهة الحصار
غزة- فلسطين
Popular Committee Against Siege
Gaza - Palestine

Website: http://www.freegaza.ps