Gaza Healthcare System Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Paul Waugh
Main Page: Paul Waugh (Labour (Co-op) - Rochdale)Department Debates - View all Paul Waugh's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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Dr Opher
I absolutely agree. War is traumatic on so many different levels, and mental health is a key part of holistic care and must be covered in any rebuilding of the healthcare system. We also need to start to look at training people in the Gaza strip and the occupied territories, because it is better to train them than to import them.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend rightly makes a passionate case for why we should be doing more to help the healthcare system in Gaza. It is quite clear that the 50 severely ill children from Gaza who were evacuated by the Government and treated in NHS hospitals were well cared for. Indeed, the Prince of Wales visited some of them in hospital and afterwards said explicitly that they had faced
“experiences no child should ever face.”
Does my hon. Friend agree that the next step the Government should take is to treat children in the region? Plenty of British medics are willing to go out there and help; the Government should be encouraging them to use their NHS expertise to treat children in the region and to train medics in the specialisms that are desperately needed.
Dr Opher
My hon. Friend is spot on. Rather than evacuating children to the NHS, which was the right thing to do while war was raging, it is better to build up facilities in the area and start training doctors and other health professionals to look after people there. We are training some Gazan medical students—I have met some of them—but the future lies in building up medical training in the area.