Children’s fund celebrates first successful treatments in Jordan

AMMAN — “I was hit by shrapnel but I didn’t feel it immediately,” Syrian Mohammad Jamous said.

“When I looked down at my leg, it was bleeding badly. I started yelling so people would help me and take me to the hospital,” said the 14-year-old, who came from the Syrian town of Dael to Jordan seeking refuge.

Jamous and six-year-old Gozlan Ghassan were the first two children to be treated by the Jordan Chapter of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), a humanitarian relief group that offers medical assistance to children in the Middle East.

The PCRF’s Jordan Chapter, set up two months ago, celebrated its successful treatment of the two Syrians in a ceremony on Monday.

Established in 1991 to offer free medical care to Palestinian children who had suffered from the Palestine-Israel conflict, the US-registered humanitarian organisation now encompasses 17 chapters throughout the United States and the Middle East and offers help to children of all backgrounds.

“We treat the children based on their medical needs; we don’t care if they are Christian or Muslim, Palestinian, Syrian or Iraqi, Shiite or Sunni,” the co-founder and president of the PCRF, Steve Sosebee, told The Jordan Times at the ceremony.

“Our duty is to help any child here in the Middle East who needs medical care,” he added.

The organisation, based in Ramallah, sends children abroad for surgeries, brings medical teams to the Palestinian territories to treat children locally and sets up humanitarian projects like a cancer hospital for children in Beit Jala, Sosebee said.

In 2012 the PCRF operated on 1,542 children in the Palestinian territories and took 40 children to the US or elsewhere for treatment. In addition, 5,000 children were screened, Eyad Younis, head of the Jordan Chapter of the PCRF, told The Jordan Times.

The organisation’s Amman chapter was set up because of the increased need for medical treatment of children in Jordan.

“We decided that Jordan has enough capabilities medically and financially to do some of these cases here, especially now that we are getting a lot of non-Palestinian, non-Jordanian kids,” Younis said.

“So instead of sending them outside Jordan, we decided to try to find treatment for them here,” he noted.

“All hospitals in the States, Europe and Dubai treat the kids for free, but we have had a hard time in Jordan and Lebanon because of the influx of refugees. It is very hard for [hospitals] to offer free treatment, so we try to get reduced rates,” Sosebee said.

Jamous came to the Zaatari Refugee Camp near Mafraq, 80km northeast of Amman, two days after being treated temporarily at a Free Syrian Army field hospital near his hometown Dael.

“At the French hospital in the Zaatari camp, they tried to repair the veins in my leg but it didn’t work, so they had my leg amputated,” Jamous said.

In February, he was sent by the PCRF to the Texas Orthopaedic Hospital in Houston, the US to have an artificial leg fitted.

Ghassan was the first PCRF-patient to be treated in Jordan. She sustained serious injuries to her forehead when a tank shell hit her home in Daraa.

“She was treated at a government hospital in Daraa for 45 days, but we left for Jordan because the doctors in Daraa told me she needed surgery to cover the gash in the forehead and they didn’t have the capacity to do that,” Marifa Hamed, Ghassan’s grandmother, said.

The PCRF asked Nasri Khoury, a doctor at the Palestine Hospital in Amman, to treat Ghassan.

“When she came, her acute situation had settled down, but she had a bone defect which meant that anything could penetrate her forehead and damage her brain,” Khoury told The Jordan Times.

Merely 10 days after her operation, Ghassan is recovering quickly, sporting a large scar across her head.

“I was really happy when I found out the PCRF would help in Gozlan’s treatment, but I had my doubts because so many people had promised to help. I only believed that Gozlan would have her surgery when I actually saw it happening,” Hamed said.

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Found on http://jordantimes.com/childrens-fund-celebrates-first-successful-treatments-in-jordan