Every year in Balbriggan, we did a church gate collection on the Sunday after Christmas (Feast of the Holy Family) to support the Holy Family Hospital in Bethlehem. I knew it was providing very important maternity care for the West Bank and needed support to pay its way. When I visited a few days ago, I'm much better informed. I was shown around by a Belgian volunteer doctor, Jacques Keutgen. Briefly, the hospital was founded in 1882 by the Daughters of Charity (French Sisters). Cutting a long story short (wars, etc.) the Order of Malta took the hospital over in 1985. 3500 deliveries take place each year. The hospital has the only intensive care unit for babies in the West Bank. Mothers of all religions are looked after (christian and moslem). The area served is very big (takes in Bethlehem, Ramallah, Hebron, and the Desert). The hospital also trains Palestinian nurses and doctors, and has help in this from Ireland. A travelling ambulance crew goes out to the Bedouin camps in the Judean Desert where people live in tents and shacks, with no services. (I have seen such a camp in the desert outside Jerusalem). Interestingly, the hospital has its own oxygen factory! Delays at the checkpoint getting supplies through necessitated this. 75% of the hospital employees are local christians, and 70% of deliveries are from Bethlehem. The hospital is state of the art. It provides a vital service to the West Bank where people are generally poor and cut off from the outside world; huge unemployment (70%) and no social security or medical insurance. The hospital relies on support from the Order of Malta, and other contributions (like the Church Gate Collection in Balbriggan!) to cover 55% of its running costs. Alongside the hospital is the Holy Family Childrens Home run by the Daughters of Charity. It cares for 60 children, some babies; poor, abandoned, orphans, children taken into care. I met a young American doing 6 months voluntary work feeding and looking after children. Both the Hospital and the Orphanage have a lovely sense of peace and calm. Nobody running around here with charts! There's no doubt about it ... the Order of Malta, Daughters of Charity, and the Palestinian nurses, doctors and carers are doing very basic and important work here, not just for Bethlehem but for the wider West Bank.
