Ref: 20 /2022

Date: 22 August 2022

On Thursday, 18 August 2022, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) concluded the first training course in 2022 on “Human Rights and Mechanism to Promote Right to Health”, with the participation of 25 male and female from the Faculty of Medicine at al-Azhar University and in coordination with the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations in Palestine. The 20-hour training course was held over the course of 4 days from 15 to 18 August 2022 in Gaza City.

This training course comes as part of PCHR’s training courses held under “Promote, Respect, and Fulfill the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health in the Gaza Strip” project implemented by PCHR in partnership with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) and funded by the European Union.

The project aims to improve access to healthcare, legal counseling and legal assistance for Palestinian patients; to mainstream the culture of international human rights and humanitarian law, particularly the right to health, by building the capacities of those working in the health sector; and to promote improved monitoring, documenting and reporting of violations of the right to health.

At the end of the course, PCHR held a closing ceremony where Abdel Halim Abu Samra, Head of PCHR’s Training Unit, emphasized that these training courses fall within PCHR’s contribution to improving the reality of the health sector in the Gaza Strip under the catastrophic status quo caused by the Palestinian internal division and the ongoing Israeli-imposed closure and its consequent restrictions on the Gaza population. These restrictions include the lack of freedom of movement for patients to access hospitals in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, and the entry of medicine, medical tools and equipment into the strip, which aggravated patients’ humanitarian situation, threatening the collapse of the health sector in the Gaza Strip. Abu Samra hopes that this cooperation with medical personnel in the health sector would continue to serve human rights causes and the right to health, stressing that PCHR is keen to organize such courses for medicine faculty students in particular, as they are the prospective medical staff. 

For his part, Dr. Mohammad Zaghbar, Dean of Medicine Faculty at Al-Azhar University, thanked and appreciated on behalf of al-Azhar University PCHR’s efforts to organize this training course, indicating the interest of the Deanship of the Medicine Faculty to hold training courses in the field of human rights, especially the right to health. He added that medicine faculty seeks to sustain its relationship with PCHR to increase the number of beneficiaries of these courses, stressing the importance of  transferring what they learned to their peers and their important role in the future as doctors and activists contributing to enhancing human rights, particularly the right to health, and to apply it in their life and workplaces, and to be pioneers of such ethics in order to improve health services in Palestinian society. 

Ismail Abu Jazzar, the Supervisor of the Community Rehabilitation Program at the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, stressed the importance of such training courses

Isma’il Abu Jazar, the Supervisor on PMRS’s Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) Program, emphasized the importance of these training courses in light of the difficult condition facing the health sector and to improve the knowledge and raise awareness of the medical personnel in the field of human rights and to prepare medical staff specialized in the provision of the health service from a human rights perspective.

Medical student Omar ‘Aloun, Head of the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations in Gaza, praised the leading role of PCHR in disseminating the human rights culture as PCHR was mainly behind establishing the Peace and Human Rights Committee under the Federation’s umbrella.  He also appreciated PCHR’s effective contribution in raising the Federation students’ awareness and way to the establishment of this committee.  He also stressed PCHR’s role in helping them to improve their theoretical knowledge and impart scientific and practical skills in human rights.