Palestinian health crisis gets worse

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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The two-year study by researchers at the World Health Organization, U.N. agencies and universities in the United States, Norway, France and the West Bank, showed a health system struggling to deal with a rising population and growing demand, according to an account by Reuters news agency.

"The health situation ... shows the urgency of finding a political solution, as restraints and insecurities will continue to undermine the creation of a health infrastructure," Jimmy Carter commented in The Lancet yesterday.

"Movement restrictions affect every aspect of Palestinian life," the researchers wrote. "These restrictions directly and destructively impact the social determinants of health." "Socioeconomic conditions have deteriorated since the mid-1990s, with a humanitarian crisis emerging in the Gaza Strip and intensifying as a result of the Israeli army invasion in Dec. 2008 and Jan. 2009," they wrote.

The fighting also continued in the region as a Palestinian driver rammed a large construction vehicle into a bus and police car on a Jerusalem highway, wounding two officers before he was shot dead - the latest in a string of attacks by Palestinian militants using heavy machinery, according to an account by The Associated Press.