Paul Calvert found out about the Holy Family hospital

The Holy Family hospital in Bethlehem is dedicated to providing quality care for women and babies, without regard to religion or national origins. As the main maternity hospital in the area they deliver over 3,000 babies a year and through a strong emphasis on educating their staff, they have been able to bring their mortality rate down to just 2.9% for their neo-natal intensive care unit. To find out more about this amazing work, Paul Calvert spoke with Dr Robert Tabash.

Paul: What is the Holy Family Hospital?

Dr Tabash: The Holy Family Hospital is the maternity hospital of Bethlehem. We are an over 125 years old institution. The hospital is run directly by the Order of Malta and several associations from the Order of Malta from around the world support this hospital, including the British Association of the Order of Malta.

Paul: How far away are you from the birthplace of Christ?

Dr Tabash: We are at around 800 metres from the birth place of our Lord and we deliver today 70% of all babies born in the whole area of Bethlehem.

Paul: Is the hospital a charity or is it run by the Palestinian Authority?

Dr Tabash: It's run directly by the Order of Malta. It's a charitable institution. We ask people to pay what they can afford. Our fees are already subsidised by the Order of Malta. A small example is that we ask people to pay 100 Euros for a delivery if they can afford it and if they cannot, then a social worker would immediately look into the case and help. We also run the only neo-natal intensive care unit in the whole district of Bethlehem and as such we get all the high risk pregnancies and all the pre-mature cases of the whole area and it is quite a costly business.

Paul: How many babies are delivered here a day?

Dr Tabash: Ten a day. We deliver 3,380 babies in one year so roughly it is about 10 babies a day.

Paul: You have outreach clinics; what is the aim of the outreach clinics and where do you go to?

Dr Tabash: The aim of the outreach clinic is to reach the poor at his doorstep; those who cannot easily access the hospital. We take a mobile clinic and go to places like the Judean desert looking for encampments of people; people who are living under tents and shacks and who don't have anything; no sanitation, no running water, no electricity, no medication and we reach those people at the door of their tents with a mobile clinic and equipment, with an electric generator. It becomes an air conditioned examination room that's fully equipped with an ultra sound to examine the pregnant woman.

Paul: You have a neo-natal intensive care unit; is that rare for the Palestinian Territories?

Dr Tabash: There are a few of them, but our strong point is that we have the trained staff to run an intensive care unit. We have spent a lot of funding on educating our staff. We send them to do post graduate diplomas in neo-natal nursing for example and so the end result of that modern unit has been the mortality rate of babies related to that unit is 2.9%, which is equivalent to anywhere in the western world. In comparison, Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza has a very big neo-natal unit and the mortality rate of babies admitted to that unit is 34%, so 11 times more.

The key is education and training of staff. We were lucky that US aid and the Belgian government helped us during 2007 with the building of a new neo-natal intensive care unit; a new labour ward; a new emergency admission area and a lot of that grant from US aid went to the education of staff.