As we busied ourselves with the countdown to our recent Christmas and New Year celebrations, there was a small Kiwi medical team in the Holy Land demonstrating the true 'spirit of Christmas'.
Dr Alan Kerr, pioneering cardiac surgeon and former head of cardiac surgery at Auckland's Greenlane Hospital, led a medical mission during this time to save the lives of around 25 Palestinian children with congenital heart disease.
But this wasn't a one-off mercy mission for Kerr and his team.
Now retired, Kerr visits the Palestinian Territories for at least one month three times a year to undertake paediatric cardiac surgery at Makassed Islamic Charitable Hospital in East Jerusalem on a voluntary basis.
"I feel it's my second home now," he says "I get a huge welcome."
This time Kerr was joined by New Zealanders Nathan Ibbott, a perfusionist from Auckland's Starship Hospital who ran a new heart-lung machine, and Warren Nairn, a nurse from Christchurch Hospital who provided education and clinical support in paediatric cardiac post-operative intensive care for the local nurses.
Their work was supported by the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF), a non-profit humanitarian relief organisation. Despite being located in a politically volatile area, involving hard work, long hours, and sometimes challenging working conditions, assistance from high calibre volunteer recruits is easy for Kerr to find.
"Everyone who goes there wants to go back," he says. "They get attracted by the general atmosphere.
Quite largely because the people are so welcoming and the culture's so different…Some people are attracted to the tension of the place. It's certainly, in a kind of way, much more alive than New Zealand."
These kiwi volunteers are assisting with a significant problem for the Palestinian people.
Over 700 babies are born with congenital heart disease in Palestine each year – a higher incidence than most countries.
The Palestinian health system has limited funding, facilities and resources to address this issue.
And so in 2003 PCRF established the International Palestine Cardiac Relief Organisation (IPCRO) to organise various surgeons, cardiologists, and other medical specialists from around the world to build a paediatric cardiac surgery programme in Palestine.
Kerr was elected as IPCRO President from amongst some of the world's leading cardiac surgeons in December 2005. The Kiwi team's recent visit was a major milestone towards achieving IPCRO's goal of a self-sufficient Palestinian paediatric cardiac service. In addition to operating on about 25 children, the team established the running of a new four bed paediatric cardiac intensive care unit (ICU) – the equipment funded by donations to PCRF.
"This new development is very significant," says Nairn. Previously Kerr has shared ICU facilities with a local adult cardiac surgeon, being only able to operate when the surgeon was on leave.
From now he can work independently in a second operating theatre and many more cases can be handled. Having staff ready to run the new paediatric ICU is essential.
Nairn has assisted in establishing clinical protocols for running the new unit, and has spent weeks working alongside staff with their patients providing education and support to build their capacity to operate the unit independently.
So less than 3 years after development began, having established a small nucleus of excellent local staff, and with a new paediatric cardiac ICU, all the service requires to be self-sufficient is a competent local surgeon with relevant experience.
Kerr knows just the person. He plans to bring the surgical resident, Dr Vivian Bader back to New Zealand in May 2007 to complete her training, gained mostly to date from him and other visiting surgical teams.
Such achievements have not gone unnoticed. Steve Sosebee, President and CEO of PCRF, says that Kerr has built a name for New Zealand in Palestine – he is known and asked for by the locals. "New Zealand is a small country but has had a significant role in an area that has been neglected and under-developed."
The families also recognise what Kerr and his teams achieve, and their gratitude is explicit.
"They just can't thank you enough," says Nic Gini, Nurse Unit Manager of Starship Hospital's Paediatric ICU, another committed Kiwi who has worked several times with Kerr in Gaza and the West Bank.
"They would bring boxes of chocolates they couldn't necessarily afford…They would go and spend the last of their money to buy a bottle of fizzy drink or something for you." But it's seeing the children recover that brings rewards to the team for their work.
"[They] are fairly tough there. They don't use a lot of morphine…Kids are up and walking the day after surgery," describes Kerr. "They'll meet you at the top of the stairs when you come in in the morning with the whole family in tow, which is quite nice."
Facing challenges very foreign to New Zealand life, combined with the intense workload and changed lifestyle, can make it difficult adjusting back to life in New Zealand after a mission.
"I've been so wrapped up in this, so intensely involved, that when I get back here I feel a huge let-down in a kind of way," says Kerr. "I pretty soon get out on my boat or something and I get used to it."
But perhaps Kerr has found a way to bring a little of Palestine home with him.
He is currently setting up a New Zealand chapter of PCRF, forming a charitable trust to promote awareness of PCRF and its efforts, and raise funds for the organisation's work. The chapter will also be organising Kiwi doctors and nurses to volunteer in the Middle East.
Kerr and Nairn are already making plans for their welcome return to Jerusalem in 2007.
Their ongoing commitment to this project, and that of other Kiwis, is a testimony to Gini's comments.
"To make a difference in life is what is important. If you've got skills use them, give them, share them with other people. If it can make a difference, even if it's a small difference to their life in a positive way, then you've achieved something." To find out more about PCRF please visit: www.pcrf.net
The Story of PCRF Steve Sosebee worked in Palestine covering the first Palestinian Uprising (or Intifada) as a freelance journalist in the late 1980s. While covering the maiming of a 10-year-old boy and his sister in 1989, he was impassioned to help arrange free prosthetics and orthopaedic surgery for them in the United States. Soon other parents heard about their treatment and started to bring their sick or injured children to him for help.
After rejection by most of the established charities in the region, and with no medical training or background, in 1991 Steve and a few like-minded volunteers founded the non-profit Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF). Originally aimed at providing free medical care abroad for injured and sick children who could not be treated in Palestine, PCRF has expanded to provide treatment to children, and when possible adults, from any part of the Arab world. PCRF has also expanded to provide other humanitarian medical projects such as visiting medical missions like Kerr's.
You can find out more information about PCRF and their achievements at www.pcrf.net
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