Medical Initiative For the Benefit of

The Children of Palestine

Ear Surgery for Palestinian Children

By Dr. Ibrahim K. Ladaa

Message from Nablus, August 12, 2003

(4th  report)

 Dear Colleagues,

The operations are going very well. Every day I carry out two operations in tympanoplasty or mastoidectomy.. While waiting for the instruments for the second operation to be prepared – there is only one ear sieve at our disposal – I carry out small operations, for example inserting tympanic tubes. We take the patients as they come, although the waiting list for operations is very long. The main reason for this is, although the patients set off early enough on their way home from home to hospital, because of the numerous ‘mahasim’ (checkpoints), they have to wait for hours in the hot sun. So many patients don’t arrive at the hospital until late afternoon.

I operate on six days of the week. Friday is a day of rest. Between the individual operations I examine patients who have come long distances and possibly accept them as in-patients. Up till now I have carried out 16 operations. They were almost all cholesteatoma which filled up the complete mastoid, the middle ear respectively, something that occurs extremely rarely in Germany. Sometimes there are critical moments during the operation, but no complications up to now.

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. Rupert Neudeck of the Cap Anamur/German Emergency Doctors. He is a wonderful person. We had an evening meal together and talked and discussed for several hours. He wanted to know a lot about Palestine and I wanted to know a lot about his work. Unfortunately I had to go to bed at one o’clock because I had to operate the next day. It was a very exciting evening and we parted in the hope of meeting again. Mr. Neudeck had seen the wall and was very disturbed about it. He is trying to help the people who live behind the world’s biggest prison and to fight for their cause. He said you have to have seen it in order to understand and to report more exactly.