A Comprehensive Primary Health Care Program for Palestine is needed: PHM's proposal to The Hague Group
Why should The Hague Group consider a humanitarian and a health agenda-action plan?
Stopping the genocide also involves preserving the health of survivors, especially women and children, and this can be done by preventing the Palestinian people from getting sick and dying from avoidable diseases. The most cost-effective strategy to contribute to this goal is Comprehensive Primary Health Care (CPHC), which was approved by the World Health Assembly in 1978 to achieve Health For All.
Why is PHM a relevant ally for The Hague Group and the Colombian government in this regard?
The People's Health Movement is not an international agency but a network of grassroots organisations. Palestinian organisations, most notably the Health Work Committees (HWC – West Bank), Al Awda Health and Community Association (AWDA - Gaza) and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (both in the West Bank and Gaza), are founding members of the movement. Solidarity with Palestine has always been a priority to our movement.
Apart from the local organisations in Palestine, PHM can count on a large and global network of Primary Health Care experts, practitioners and organisations as since its inception CPHC has been the most important PHM strategy to transform health care systems, to empower communities and health workers and to mobilize intersectoral action to deal with health issues and their social determinants of health.
Proposals to the Hague Group
Financial support to Primary Health Care program
Objective: The program aims to ensure the continued operation and provision of life-saving childcare, maternal, sexual, and reproductive healthcare in the Gaza Strip (1), and the early detection of breast cancer in the West Bank (2)
Through this program, local partner organisations will provide the following services and activities:
Gaza:
Under-five preventive services, well-baby clinic, health education for mothers and caregivers.
Normal deliveries, caesarean sections, both elective and emergency, gynaecological surgeries.
West Bank:
Preventive health services including the early diagnosis of breast cancer through a mobile ´Pink´ clinic.
Health education and promotion, such as awareness raising among women on the importance of self-breast examination
By reinforcing our local partners’ childcare, maternal care capacity and preventing a full collapse of health services in Gaza, this program will directly reduce maternal and child mortality, neonatal mortality, uphold women’s dignity, and ensure that pregnant women in the Gaza Strip are not left to deliver in tents, shelters, or unsafe conditions without skilled assistance or surgical options. This program is fully aligned with the WHO Health Cluster priorities, which call for urgent expansion of child and maternal health services across the Gaza Strip. With decades of service delivery experience and deep community trust, our local partners are uniquely positioned to implement this program quickly, efficiently, and with measurable humanitarian impact.
On the West Bank, the program will tackle some of the challenges Palestinians face, including access to affordable, quality and dignified early breast cancer detection services, with special focus on mammography screening and community-based awareness raising sessions. An emphasis will be placed on remote, vulnerable, and marginalised areas in the West Bank, along the frontline with settler colonies.
- Medical Missions
The global PHM is willing to mobilise a number of trained health professionals in different specialties that are essential to the reconstruction of the Palestinian health system. PHM is proposing to send several medical missions in collaboration with The Hague Group and in coordination with the World Health Organisation.
- Health conference
It is important to bring together the knowledge and analysis about the health situation in Palestine in order to discuss strategies for a Palestinian lead reconstruction. The PHM is well placed to organise a conference on this topic in cooperation with several governments from the Global South. The PHM can bring in the academic contacts as well as the civil society from the Middle East as well as the rest of the world. The Hague Group governments could take care of the governmental participation. Such a conference could be organised in the region later this year in a hybrid format to ensure participation from Palestinian experts and grassroots groups.
What is the People´s Health Movement?
The People's Health Movement (PHM) is a global network bringing together grassroots health activists, civil society organizations and academic institutions from around the world, particularly from the Global South since 2000. We currently have a presence in more than 70 countries. PHM works on various programmes and activities and is committed to Comprehensive Primary Health Care and addressing the Social, Environmental and Economic Determinants of Health.
