PA Poll: Checkpoints do not effect Palestinian Health Care

It seems that Doctors without Borders is much better at producing assassins than it is at producing accurate reports. This NGO, who had one of its staffers arrested for plotting to kill the Israeli Prime Minister, has been claiming that Israeli checkpoints have been a contributing factor in the poor health care in the Palestinian territories (we know it has improved health care in Israel as it has prevented terrorist attacks).

Doctors without Borders forgot to do one small thing before they made their biased claims--investigate what the truth was. In a poll of residents of the PA, conducted by a Palestinian owned pollster, only 6% of respondents attributed their poor health care to the checkpoints. Most attributed it to the fact that they have to pay too much for crappy health care.

Hey Achmed, if you convince your government to pursue peace maybe we can lend you a couple of good Jewish doctors.

Poll: Checkpoints Not a Health Issue for PA Arabs

(IsraelNN.com) A poll of Palestinian Authority Arabs said that the vast majority never experienced any problem when seeking medical help because they were prevented from passing through IDF roadblocks. A host of international groups, such as the Doctors Without Borders group – one of whose members was arrested recently for plotting to kill Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert – have accused Israel of exacerbating health problems for PA Arabs by preventing them from receiving treatment by holding them up for hours at the checkpoints.

But the poll, conducted by a professional PA polling group, showed that in actuality, the checkpoint issue had a negligible impact on Arabs seeking health care. 25% of those polled who said they had been denied treatment for health problems cited the high cost of medical care as the main problem. Other major reasons cited were long waiting times (23%) and a lack of qualified personnel in PA health facilities (17%). Only 6% said they were held back for a significant period by a checkpoint.

During the period 4-8 February, Near East Consulting (NEC) conducted a
health survey of over 1,100 randomly selected Palestinians in the West Bank,the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem; 781 of the interviews were successfully completed. The survey covered a number of issues relating to family health and well, including mental health, the prevalence of different diseases,health insurance and medical coverage, obstacles to health care service delivery, quality of health services and evaluations of healthcare
professionals. Interviews were conducted by telephone. The margin of error for the survey is +/- 3.5%, with a 95% confidence level.

...
5. Obstacles to health care delivery

As noted in the previous section, nearly one quarter of Palestinian
households are either deterred from seeking health care, or have been deniedcare altogether. Nearly one fifth of respondents experienced waiting times longer than two hours. In this context, the following section seeks to
identify the main obstacles to timely health care provision in the Occupied
Territories.

5.1 Main obstacles for the general population Figure 22: Reasons for denied or delayed provision of health care

25% Could not afford health care
23% Too many people waiting
17% Not enough health staff attending
10% No available transportation
6% Not present in my area
6% Inaccessible because of barrier/checkpoint
5% Because of internal fighting
4% Did not go because of past experience
4% Because the staff were striking
2% Did not know where to go for this service
1% Because of Israeli Palestinian fighting