Medical Initiative
For the Benefit of
The Children of Palestine
Ear Surgery for Palestinian Children
By Dr. Ibrahim K. Ladaa
Dr. Ibrahim
K. Ladaa is a Palestinian German who was born in Jaffa, Palestine. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict, Dr. Ladaa
left Jaffa as
a Palestinian refugee and lived in Ramallah. He
completed high school in Ramallah and Jerusalem and continued his higher education in Germany. Through a scholarship grant from the German Protestant Church “Brot für die
Welt”, Ibrahim attended Wurzburg University and Erlangen University, studying medicine and qualifying as a specialist in the field
of ear, nose and throat (ENT). He returned to Palestine in 1978 where he
was appointed head of the ENT Department in Ramallah Hospital and ENT consultant for the government hospitals throughout the West Bank. He was also medical consultant at the Makassed
Hospital and St Joseph Hospital, both in East Jerusalem. In 1987, he joined
the Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem and established the first ENT Department
there, where he performed microsurgery and tumor surgery. In 1990 he was appointed
Medical Director of the Augusta Victoria*. Dr.
Ladaa returned to Germany in 1997 where he has been the head of the ENT Department at
Cecilienklinik, Bad Lippspringe, North Rhine.
* The Augusta Victoria is a General Hospital with 141 beds,
owned and administered by the Lutheran World Foundation; it provided health care for half
a million Palestinian refugees and needy people between 1950 and 1995 through UNRWA
funding. After the Oslo Agreement, the hospital changed its policy and has been
operating as a private hospital.
In 2003, Dr. Ladah started the project
“Medical Initiative for the Benefit of the Children of Palestine.” The series of communications which appears below
documents the Initiative and Dr. Ladaa’s humanitarian work in Palestine, and his
impressions of the environment in and around Nablus.
The Ladah
Foundation is proud of the work of Dr. Ladaa, a close associate of the Foundation and
encourages and supports his initative and other similar initiatives.
Initiative Hearing
There are 3.29 million Palestinians living
in the occupied areas. 57% of the population is under 20 years of age. The population is
increasing at a rate of about 5% a year, life expectancy is 71.9 years. The average size
of a family is 6.1 persons.
One of the main illnesses during childhood
is, apart from anemia, the disease of the respiratory passages, especially of the upper
respiratory passages, which causes a chronic inflammatory process in the middle ear
because of the enlarged tonsils. This leads to an accumulation of fluid in the middle ear,
in turn to a decrease in hearing ability and therefore to an inhibition of the development
of the middle ear. This occurs at a period when it is very important for a small child to
be able to hear properly for this phase is very important regarding brain and language
development.
The children can be helped by a small
surgical operation which consists of inserting a small tube into the tympanic cavity. In
this way very many children can regain their normal hearing and fulfill their normal
school expectations. If this is not done, then this condition, which can also be caused by
malnutrition, especially in the case of a lack of animal protein, develops to a chronic
disease with the formation of what we call cholesteatoma (bone corrosion). This is a tumor
in the middle ear which not only destroys the ear-drum and the bones of the ear but also
the petrosal bone - a disease that is only very rarely found in Germany
these days; it was more frequent in war-time.
In such cases not only loss of hearing,
running of the ears, vertigo and a buzzing in the ears can occur but also complications
reaching as far as the inside of the skull, which can have fatal results.
An operation of the middle ear
(tympanoplasty, mastoidectomy) is vitally necessary in these cases. My 18-year-long stay (1978 1997), whilst I
mainly carried out operations of this kind in my function as senior consultant for ear,
nose and throat or hospital director respectively, gave me the possibility and experience
to do this again and, to be precise, for a period of three months from the beginning
of March to the end of May 2003.
Everything must be prepared in detail for
this mission. I have to train operation personnel, acquire operational instruments with
all the necessary accessories (tympanic tubes, middle ear prostheses etc.)
The contact to the health authorities and
also to national health organizations and to groups which are active in the health
service has been established in order to create the best possible operational situation
and to prepare patients for the operation.
I will leave it up to you in how far you
can help, whether financially or by procuring instruments for operations and aids such as
tympanic tubes or middle ear prostheses. The children of Palestine need this medial aid
and I am prepared to provide it with your support.
I would be pleased to give further
information, should it be necessary.
Dr. Ibrahim K. Ladaa
Ear, Nose and Throat Specialist
A Message of Thanks: Bad Lippspringe - 15th
November 2003
Dear Friends,
I would like to thank you very much for
supporting this mission.
I am not a journalist and I cannot write
or report well, but in order to be able to bear the situation in Palestine I needed people
with whom I could communicate. Therefore I
sent these reports as e-mails to my family and various colleagues.
During the three months of my stay in Palestine,
from the middle of July to the middle of October, I carried out 72 middle ear operations
in Nablus and Hebron and treated patients in Nablus, Hebron, Bethlehem and Ramallah
countless times.
I also had the opportunity to report for
an hour on Palestinian radio, during a live program, on middle ear ailments and their
conservative and surgical treatment.
This mission was only a drop in the ocean,
but I was thereby able to gain a deeper insight into the suffering of the people under the
occupation. I now feel confirmed in my opinion regarding the necessity of an ear
centre in Palestine.
I want to thank the local Lutheran Church
in Bad Lippspringe and the Ladah Foundation in the USA for encouraging me to complete the
first steps of this mission.
If any of you should have ideas or suggestions in this respect,
please inform me.
Kind regards,
Ibrahim K. Ladaa
Message from Nablus: 27th July 2003
Message
from Nablus: August 6, 2003
Message
from Nablus: August 11, 2003
Message
from Nablus: August 12, 2003
Message
from Nablus: August 19, 2003
Message
from Nablus: August 26, 2003
Message
from Nablus: September 1, 2003
Message
from Nablus: September 5, 2003
Message
from Hebron: September 9, 2003
Message
from Hebron, September 11, 2003