Lutheran Hospital, Caught in Crossfire, Struggles to Stay Afloat

c. 2006 Religion News Service JERUSALEM _ Augusta Victoria Hospital, a facility that treats Palestinian residents from the West Bank as well as some Arabs from East Jerusalem, has a million-dollar view from its perch atop the Mount of Olives. Built in 1910 by Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, the stone building affords a heart-stopping vista […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ Augusta Victoria Hospital, a facility that treats Palestinian residents from the West Bank as well as some Arabs from East Jerusalem, has a million-dollar view from its perch atop the Mount of Olives.

Built in 1910 by Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, the stone building affords a heart-stopping vista of the Old City of Jerusalem, whose ancient walls gently slope into the contours of the hills and valleys below. Sunlight glints off the gold-topped Dome of the Rock, built on the contested Temple Mount.


Yet even with its priceless panorama, Augusta Victoria, which is owned and operated by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), has been on an emergency footing since January, the last time the cash-starved Palestinian Authority was able to pay its debts.

The hospital, which relied on the Palestinian government’s insurance payments for 40 percent of its operating budget, was unable to pay its employees their April salaries, and is living on credit with suppliers.

“We’re in a difficult situation, even though we’re receiving help from churches around the world,” said the Rev. Mark Brown, the LWF’s regional representative in Jerusalem, referring to an emergency international appeal on the hospital’s behalf. “There are facilities in even worse shape.”

The Palestinian Authority owes huge sums of money to numerous hospitals, schools and clinics, which are scrambling to make up the shortfall without sacrificing vital services.

Augusta Victoria, like other humanitarian institutions, has been caught in the middle.

The crisis began when several Western governments, including the United States and the European Union, decided to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from the Palestinian Authority after Hamas scored a resounding victory in last January’s elections. The governments fear that Hamas, which has perpetrated numerous suicide bombings, could use the money to sponsor terrorism.

Prior to the Hamas win, about a quarter of the Authority’s gross disposable income came from donor countries. Much of that aid paid the salaries of 160,000 civil servants, and helped support medical care and other services.

Members of the “Quartet” _ the U.S., Russia, the United Nations and the European Union _ decided on May 9 to establish a fund to pay impoverished government employees. They say they are finalizing plans to channel money through alternative channels, but no one knows when or how the funds will reach the people who need it most.


“I frankly don’t know how people are living,” said Noah Salameh, director of the Center for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation, an interfaith organization in Bethlehem. “Without money coming in from the government, without salaries, people are beginning to starve. By the time the donor countries figure out how to distribute the money by bypassing Hamas, a lot of people could die.”

(BEGIN FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

It is impossible to definitively determine whether anyone has died as a result of the funds drying up, but many, like Dr. Juma As-Saqqa, spokesman for Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, have no other explanation for the sudden deaths of previously stable patients.

In the wake of the cuts, Shifa has rationed everything from bandages to antibiotics, and has diluted chemotherapy medications by up to 30 percent, As-Saqqa told the BBC in a recent interview.

Soon after his government hospital was forced to slash the number of dialysis treatments from three a week to two due to lack of funding, four patients “who had been doing dialysis for five years died last month. Why?” Saqqa asked.

(END FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM)

Augusta Victoria has been able to provide the virtually the same level of care it always has, thanks to donations from Christians around the world.

“When we realized a crisis was looming, we contacted Action for Churches” _ a worldwide network of churches and related agencies _ “and it put out an appeal on our behalf,” explained Dr. Tawfiq Nasser, the hospital’s CEO.


The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada responded with a $50,000 grant, while Lutheran World Relief, the Baltimore-based relief arm of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, donated another $75,000. Other churches and agencies have also responded, Nasser said, “but we don’t yet know the amount.”

Regardless of how much Christian supporters donate to the hospital, “it cannot cover our long-term or even short-term deficit,” Nasser said. “We need to buy chemotherapy drugs, dialysis supplies, reagents. Some of our staff have left. Our donors have been very good, but we have very major debts to deal with.”

(BEGIN SECOND OPTIONAL TRIM)

Local representatives from Christian aid groups _ including Caritas, Christian Aid and the Pontifical Mission for Palestine _ all said the people they serve are suffering due to the cessation of donor aid, and that the number of requests for assistance to their organizations has increased proportionately.

The donor countries insist that the needed funds are on their way.

David Kriss, the EU’s information officer, said the Quartet’s decision to find a way to transfer money to the Palestinian people was endorsed on May 15, during a meeting of European foreign ministers.

“The indication is that some of the money will be transferred for health and education, but exactly to whom and in exactly what way, we don’t know,” Kriss conceded.

(END SECOND OPTIONAL TRIM)

While Nasser applauded the distribution of $800,000 worth of dialysis supplies and medicine to Palestinian hospitals by the U.S. Agency for International Development as part of a $10 million emergency pledge by the Americans, “we need much more,” the administrator said.


(BEGIN THIRD OPTIONAL TRIM)

As a way to solve the problem, Steve James, the CEO of St. John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem, an Anglican-affiliated hospital that used to receive about $1 million annually from the Palestinian Authority through insurance payments, would like the donor nations to pay his facility the money owed to it.

“It would be a way to help the Palestinians without the money going directly to the Palestinian Authority. This way, we would be able to keep on operating.”

Even those hardest hit by the financial crunch have not called on the donor countries to send funds directly to the Hamas-run government, perhaps fearing themselves that money will instead be used to buy weapons rather than medicines.

(END THIRD OPTIONAL TRIM)

Hamas’ victory “has created an ethical dilemma,” acknowledged ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, the president of the Lutheran World Federation. “The challenge for us as a religious aid organization is to find a way to continue the flow of aid to the Palestinian people while facilitating a lasting, just, two-state solution.”

(FOURTH OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Hanson said he is “appalled” that the Bush administration, the EU and other donor countries “haven’t yet created a vehicle to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid to the 60 percent of Palestinians living below the poverty level.

“Speaking as a religious leader and not as a diplomat, there must be a way that the nations of the world and the religious and humanitarian organizations can find a solution,” Hanson said.


KRE/RB END CHABIN

Editors: To obtain photos of Mark Brown and the entrance to Augusta Victoria Hospital, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

NEWS STORY

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!