Providing Essential Health Services and Health System Strengthening in the Gaza Strip Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) will provide emergency healthcare to Palestinian residents in Gaza, in particular those affected by the recent violence in the context of the Great March of Return, by offering direct medical care, surgeries as well as medication and equipment, while enhancing the skills of Gaza health professionals to address the lack of training in key areas, and building a network of mutual sharing of information and understanding between Israeli and Palestinian health professionals.  

Teams consisting of volunteer Israeli physicians -specialists in vascular surgery, chest surgery, neurology, orthopaedics, mental health, paediatrics, ENT among other specialties- will travel to Gaza 10 times for two to three days, in coordination with the Palestinian Ministry of Health and local NGOs. Over the course of one year, PHRI will provide medical treatment to approximately 2,800 patients in the Gaza Strip via its Mobile Clinic. Patients who suffered from shooting in the limbs or have vascular issues and need surgery will be referred to PHRI’s specialists. 

For those patients who need treatment unavailable in Gaza PHRI will intervene to reverse exit permit denials by the IDF in about 370 cases – including permits for doctors who need to exit Gaza for training. PHRI will use sometimes use legal action, and will also challenge general criteria according to which permits are denied, in a more thematic legal procedure.  

The project aims to enhance preparedness within the health sector to better deal with sudden onset events and reinforce the capacity of the Gaza health system. Indeed, Palestinian health professionals will be trained as per their own priorities, based on academic and practical gaps identified. 

PHRI’s medical delegations to Gaza will hence provide specialized hands-on surgery coaching in the key fields of orthopaedics, vascular and chest surgery (among others) to around 50 Palestinian doctors who will participate in these surgeries to improve their skills, carrying out over 100 surgeries over the course of one year. PHRI will supply missing medical equipment and surgical tools, as needed. When back in Israel, PHRI’s surgeons continue to provide advice and support to their colleagues in Gaza via phone calls. 

In addition, two delegations of about 20 medical professionals will participate in medical hands-on coaching in the field of emergency medical care at MSR, the Centre for Medical Simulation at Sheba Medical Centre in Israel. MSR is a world leader in Simulation-Based Medical Education and patient safety training.  Simulation modalities – whether sophisticated robotics, surgical simulators or role-playing actors – are uniquely effective for training and assessing the core skills of medical professionals across the healthcare spectrum, without placing patients at risk during the process. Simulation utilizes real medical devices and equipment to provide as realistic a training platform as possible.  
PHRI will also facilitate four large-scale medical conferences in the Strip, with over 1,200 participants, bringing up-to-date medical knowledge to meet the needs of medical professionals in Gaza with a special focus on mental health, emergency medicine, orthopaedics, and vascular surgery, specialties that are severely lacking in Gaza and will help the medical system cope with the influx of wounded. 

Based on a list from the Ministry of Health in Gaza of the most urgent items required, PHRI will supply medicines and equipment, including light medical equipment and disposables. 

PHRI's interventions will contribute to addressing the needs of the population in Gaza and ease the financial burden medical treatment would have caused them. It will also ensure access to healthcare and thus contribute to social determinants of health such as enabling employment and hence financial security for entire families – and in that way, does contribute to a large number of indirect beneficiari