Paul Calvert spoke with Dr Mohammad Najajreh, from the Ministry of Health.



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Dr Najajreh: Actually before chemotherapy the child goes through many steps. The first one is the diagnosis. Usually here when we are dealing with haematological we do many procedures. Part of this procedure is the bone marrow aspiration and biopsy. It's a painful procedure, but we do it under general sedation. All our procedures we do under sedation. Our children are not suffering from any procedures. After that when we make the diagnosis you start the preparation for chemotherapy. For leukaemia it takes about seven days and we give these children corticosteroids and we prepare them for the chemotherapy. Usually they do not feel they are taking chemotherapy; it's a drug like other drugs. It's not painful. There are side effects, but they are long term after one or two months, such as alopecia. During the chemotherapy we are not facing any side effects, so it is like taking antibiotics or other drugs.

Paul: Jerusalem is very close by, do you work with Israel with some of your cases?

Dr Najajreh: Usually yes, because 80% to 90% of the children are treated here in our department, but the other 20% may require bone marrow transplantations and many sophisticated lab tests, which are not available in the West Bank, so we refer these patients to Israeli hospitals.

Paul: Do you have many stories of hope?

Dr Najajreh: Yes of course. I remember one of these cases that came here at the end of Ramadan, before the holiday at the night. The child had a huge tumour in the abdomen and he wasn't breathing well. He was in a very critical situation. Fortunately we were able to take a biopsy and I called the pathologist from home. We sat all the night here and we saw the result and it was a type of lymphoma, a very aggressive type of lymphoma, but this type is responding very well to chemotherapy. So we started chemotherapy in the same night and after about five days the tumour completely disappeared and the child was doing well, so this gives you a good hope that you must take an action and treat immediately. The child is now four years without therapy and he is doing very well.

Paul: What's it like for you as a doctor to see some of these children healed, going out with a happy smile on their face?

Dr Najajreh: It's satisfaction. We are very happy to work with these children. I remember that when I came back from Italy I had a contract in Qatar with very good money, but I refused this contract because there wasn't a paediatric oncologist centre. We met with the PCRF and we established the department. I don't want to be rich, but now I am happier than having too much money, because I can see these children are alive. It's saving lives that is very important. CR

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.