Canadian doctor wants to bring solar power to Gaza hospitals
For hospitals in Gaza, a stable source of electricity can mean the difference between life and death. After last summer's war with Israel, medical needs haven't gone away. Neither has the struggle to provide basic health care.
For medical staff, blackouts can mean operating in the dark. Now, a group of Canadians doctors want to bring solar power panels to the war-torn region's hospitals.
Tarek Loubani, who just returned from Gaza last week, is among them. He tells As It Happens co-host Carol Off that when he's working in Gaza and the power goes out: "if you're working on a patient in the middle of a procedure you kind of lunge at the patient. It's the first thing you have to do because most patients panic. You have a knife in their chest or a needle in their neck, and suddenly the lights are out...most people will jump, panic or something. So you have to restrain them right away."
Talking about what happens when someone is on life-support, Loubani says: "You see, there's this healing process that begins the moment that you start life support for any patient. And that process isn't just for the patient, it's also for the family. But, instead of being able to focus on that with my Palestinian patients in Gaza, I have to start teaching them how to ventilate, how to manually pump the life-support so that the patient keeps breathing when the electricity goes out. That's terrible, that's unacceptable, and that's something that we have to change."
He adds: "There is a project that has happened at the biggest hospital where I work (Shifa). They have solar power which is the same as what we're trying to put on every other hospital...and since then, there's been not one second of down time. And you know, when I go into that intensive care unit, the people breathe differently, they walk differently. They're not worried about their patients for the wrong reasons. They're worried about their patients for the right reasons."
The priority is to make sure the intensive care, dialysis units and operating rooms are connected to the solar power supply.
At this stage, the group is hoping to raise $200,000 for the first hospital. For more information visit EmpowerGAZA.org.