LEILA FADEL, HOST:
This week marks 22 months of war in Gaza. And in all these months, UNICEF estimates more than 50,000 children have been killed or wounded, 50,000. Those who have survived but are injured are struggling to receive care in Gaza, where virtually every single hospital has been bombarded, and many are no longer functioning. Heal Palestine is a nonprofit organization carrying out the largest known evacuation of wounded children from Gaza to the United States, 11 children and their families. Some have already arrived to get care in hospitals across the U.S. The American organization was founded last year to get aid to Palestinian children and families. Joining me now to talk about this is the co-founder of Heal Palestine, Dr. Zeena Salman. Welcome to the program and thank you for being here.
ZEENA SALMAN: Thank you so much for having me, Leila.
FADEL: Tell us about these children. Where are they now?
SALMAN: Thanks for asking. These kids have been embarking on a long journey, which began last Wednesday out of Gaza (ph) and they had to go across several checkpoints to make it to Jordan. And just yesterday, Sunday, eight of these 11 children have arrived to various cities across the country from Boston...
FADEL: Oh, they're here.
SALMAN: ...And Columbus all the way to Seattle.
FADEL: And what kind of care will they be receiving?
SALMAN: The majority of these children will be receiving care for amputations. So that could include orthopedic surgery to revise where the amputation took place, as well as receiving prosthetics and learning to walk again. And these could be kids as old as 16, 17 years old who are needing to learn how to walk again. We do have children also who have diseases that they don't - couldn't care for because the health care system has been destroyed in Gaza over the last 22 months. But as we all know, this is the largest population of amputee children in modern history. And so that's the vast majority of what we're seeing and trying to treat.
FADEL: Now, Dr. Salman, there are tens of thousands of children in need of medical attention. How does your team decide who will receive care?
SALMAN: Leila, this is an incredibly complicated process. As you said, there are tens of thousands of children, and we hear from them every day. Once we do, our teams in Gaza, as we have staff there, have to reach out to families in hospitals, get the required medical reports from them. And then it's really almost a filtering process because these kids have to get approvals from the Palestinian health system as well as from the Israeli security system, the Jordanians to transit through and visa applications to the United States. So sort of the ones that were able to make it through that entire process are the ones that can come to the U.S. In addition to that, we also have to submit these kids to U.S. hospitals where we obtain charity care from hospitals that are able to donate this care for free or prosthetic centers. And so those who kind of check off all of those boxes are able to come here.
And I think one of the perverse things about all of this is that once you've jumped through all of those hoops, you're considered one of the lucky kids. And at the end of the day, these are 11 children out of a total of 62 kids that Heal Palestine has brought to the United States so far. And these kids have all lost limbs, have lost health. They've all lost weight. They're all incredibly malnourished, as we're hearing from our team in Jordan and the receiving communities in the United States. And they've lost family members. Many of these children are orphaned or have lost a sibling or a parent. And yet, they're considered lucky. And there's something so perverse about that, but we will try to give them back a little semblance of their childhood and their health again.
FADEL: Is there a particular story of the children that Heal Palestine has helped that stays with you?
SALMAN: I have to tell this story, a story that's been sitting with me now for months but has come to a little bit of a silver lining of a culmination just yesterday. A little girl, Rahaf, who is just 12 years old, arrived to Boston yesterday. And I'm sure many of us recall last October - these images are seared in our minds - the tent fires that took place outside of a hospital...
FADEL: Yeah.
SALMAN: ...After an Israeli missile struck that area, and the child and the mother who were burned to death. Well, that mother and that boy, that teenage boy, their - another family member, sister, was a surviving member of the family, burned severely, but lost her mother and lost her brother in the process. One of the crazy things you'll hear now is that her aunt, the sister of her now deceased mother, who was burned alive. Her aunt is in Texas through Heal Palestine. She brought her son here, who was another child with an amputation. So yesterday, that mom was able to fly to Boston and be the first person that her niece was able to see when she got off the plane. Last week, that mom called me and said, thank you for evacuating my niece. I want you to know that her sister's dying words to her were, please take care of my daughter. And she was so grateful she would be able to fulfill her sister's dying wish.
FADEL: Wow. Incredible. Dr. Zeena Salman is a pediatrician and the co-founder of Heal Palestine. Thank you for your time.
SALMAN: Thank you, Leila. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
