Community health - Preventing chronic illness in Palestine
Overview
Since 1999, Healthlink Worldwide has been working with The Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (UPMRC) to improve the management of chronic illness - including heart disease, breast cancer, diabetes and lung cancer - in rural communities in Palestine. The project, the first of its kind in Palestine is funded by the Community Fund.
The mobile clinic team reaches 27 villages in the outlying districts of Ramallah. The team also visits workplaces such as the electricity company and factories in Ramallah. This ensures men can access health services, as the health workers found that men often missed out on their village visits. Many areas are often very difficult to reach due to the curfews and closure enforced by the Israeli army, so the mobile clinic provides a real lifeline.
Accurate information and clear guidelines are essential to the prevention and management of chronic disease. UPMRC are developing guidelines for the management of chronic disease based on the experiences of the mobile clinic team. The guidelines are being shared with the Ministry of Health and other service providers, so that they can contribute to the development of national protocols in Palestine.
Healthlink Worldwide has supported UPMRC in the development and production
of health promotion materials such as leaflets explaining how to carry
out a breast self-examination. UPMRC is also regularly involved in radio
and TV programmes to promote better health awareness - the UPMRC video
unit recently produced a video promoting healthy lifestyle choices that
was shown on Palestinian television.
The mobile clinic team uses many other methods of communicating about health. These include public talks, short education workshops at the end of screening sessions, and a schools programme that targets girls and young women aged 15-18 years old. Direct face-to-face communication enables the health workers to make sure that they are meeting the needs of the communities and getting essential health information across.
Information collected by the mobile clinic team has been organised through a database, which UPMRC uses to plan and manage their screening and treatment programmes. Healthlink Worldwide and a local epidemiologist are supporting UPMRC to also use this data to better understand the patterns and incidence of chronic disease. This will enable UPMRC to contribute to an informed debate on the need for national management of chronic disease within Palestine.