doctors without border

Unique guided study tour in the West Bank looking at health issues
11th-18th June 2008, 7 nights for £655

Many medical and health care jobs involve high levels of stress. But the pressures and stresses of UK hospitals pale in comparison to the working conditions faced by medics in Palestine.

Olive Cooperative are offering a unique tour of Palestine and Israel focusing on medicine and healthcare. While designed with medics in mind, the tour is open to anyone with an interest in health care in the region, and anyone looking for a general introduction to the situation. The tour will be guided by a UK medical student with extensive experience as a long term volunteer in the West Bank.

Visiting a broad range of medical settings and meeting with medical professionals in Palestine and Israel, this tour aims to offer an understanding of the challenges facing medics.

The tour will visit emergency services who face Israeli army searches and gunfire in the 'normal' course of their work; and meet the organisations planning long term health care provision in this unstable situation. Tour participants will also meet with medical students who have to cross military checkpoints to get from their lectures to the teaching clinic.

The tour will offer an insight into access to medical care in the West Bank, visiting a clinic in Hebron fenced in by settlers. Participants will meet key Israeli groups working for better access to health care in the West Bank. The group will also visit an unrecognised village in Israel, denied access to healthcare, electricity or even sufficient clean water.

And in the light of the discussion in the BMJ of a proposed boycott of the Israeli Medical Association, the tour will ask what medics could, or should, do to change the current situation.

i got this in my uni email inbox just now..sounds soo cool, interesting n exciting!to be frank, i feel like it is some kind of obligation for me to go...n how wonderful it wud be if i can go..u know, like to see by muself how it's like the env in the West Bank..to see by my self the life n suffers of our muslim brothers n sisters there...how i wish i cud hav the strength n courage to challenge my self to face the "war" env there help as much as i cud to improve the healthcare accessibility there...erghh!duno if this sounds like an excuse or not, i hav OSCE xm on 11th june n hav booked my ticket back to msia on the 13th :)..so unfortunately, ive missed the chance this time..who knows next time?