Life in the Hands of a Road Restriction
By Louise Bjerre Dalum

When patients cannot go to the doctor, the doctor must come to them—in a mobile clinic.  That is the situation in Palestine where roads all over the country have either been closed for normal entry or have been restricted by Israeli Army checkpoints.

A Danish medical student, Hilde Hylland Uhlving, 26, is spending five months as a volunteer in Jenin, working in one of such clinics: a journey which ended up being a story of human bonding.

A little boy enters the office.  Around his head is a big pink towel soaking with blood.  Quickly, Hilde and the Palestinian doctor in-charge, Dr. Kussay, unwrap his the towel over the boy’s head.  A quick look reveals a five-centimetre long wound right into the skull.  The boy is quiet.  No sound and no tears.  He just looks at the doctors working efficiently in their working clothes: a white jacket saying UPMRC, Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Centre.

“He is in chock,” says Dr. Kussay as he quickly cuts the hair around the wound, which he disinfects with Mercurochrome.  The boy is still as quiet.

“Luckily, it is not serious,” Hilde replies and starts stitching the wound with a steady hand. 

The room is quiet with only the wailing voice of the little boy’s grandmother who sits in a corner crying.

Such is a typical day at the mobile clinic of UPMRC.  A team of three doctors, two medical students from Denmark and three nurses started out early in the morning from Jenin to one of the 30 villages where they go every week.

Since the start of the second Intifada, the passage between villages and cities has been almost impossible because of the Israeli military occupation.  Today Israeli soldiers, who put up roadblocks and checkpoints on every road leading to Jenin, control all passage to the city.  Only people with special permits are allowed to leave or enter the city.  To ensure a stabile medical contact with people outside Jenin, UPMRC therefore started up this mobile unit clinic.

“I think that the mobile clinic is extremely important,” Hilde explains.  “It shows that people have not given up and are still fighting for a normal life.”

The little boy’s head is now being wrapped in a big white bandage.  He leaves the clinic with the message that he has to come back again next time the mobile clinic comes to town a week later.

“It is almost like working in an emergency hospital.  All the doctors normally sit beside each other and call up the patients,” Hilde says.

“Yesterday,” she continues, “there was a woman who had stomach pain and had to be examined.  Then we all had to clear our tables and make everybody leave the room before she could lie on one of the tables.  Because of that you don’t often see the usually close patient-doctor contact which we have in Denmark.”

Today they are lucky and are working in a regular clinic and not in a school or in different homes as usual. Each doctor has his own room in the clinic and Hilde is joining one of them, helping to examine and make suggestions to the medical treatments. But it is still like sitting in a train station. In a constant flow patients, doctors, relatives, drivers and nurses’ rushes in and out of the room.

A woman comes in carrying a bag of six different medications. Dr. Kussay has a short talk with her and looks at the drugs. He smiles. Many of the drugs she doesn’t even know why she got. He shows some of it to Hilde.

“That is one of the biggest problems here, Hilde explains. “All patients expect to be treated with medicaments. If they don’t get a prescription they almost get angry. For them drugs is the only treatment to their problems”.

After three hours with a constant flow of 90 patients it is time to go back to Jenin. Every one carries big boxes of medicaments out into the mobile clinic van. The driver runs around with a cigarette in his hand trying to get everybody into the car. The music is being turned on. The other medical student and a doctor discuss the patients of the day and everybody talks. Hilde leans back and smile.

“This is why I chose to go here. I wanted to use my profession as a medical student to get to know people on a more equal basis. You become colleagues and share experiences together. That seems like a very natural way to get to know people and get a better understanding of the situation. After being here for two months I can’t really tell if I am making any big difference being an international medical student, who has a passport, which works, in the checkpoints. But it makes a difference that I am here. That I am meeting a lot of people, getting to know them and can tell their story back home.”