Paul Calvert spoke with Amal Dweib, the Director of the Al-Sadeel Society in Bethlehem.

In 2000 to 2005 there were 8,106 new cancer cases in the West Bank, with 948 cancer cases in the Bethlehem district. There were 3,471 deaths. There is a high mortality rate among cancer patients in the Palestinian Authority because most cancer patients are diagnosed at the end stage of the disease.

Al-Sadeel Society is the only registered Palliative Care Society in the Palestinian Authority that dedicates its efforts to start education and training programmes in palliative care issues and to provide home-based palliative care services to cancer patients and their families. Paul Calvert spoke with Amal Dweib, the Director of the Al-Sadeel Society in Bethlehem to find out more.

Paul: What is the Al-Sadeel Society?

Amal: Al-Sadeel Society is a health organisation that is taking care of cancer patients and chronic disease patients and their families. We got our registration in 2008.

Paul: When were you founded and why were you founded?

Amal: We started to work in 2006. After I worked with cancer patients for six years we found that we gave the patient the chemotherapy and the treatment and we are fighting the disease, but we forget the patient and the family of the patient. Our patients after two years of treatment and five years of treatment come back again with the disease. In that time all we can do is symptom control and pain management. We didn't know how to deal with these cases.

In that time I got a chance to have a training course in end of life care in the USA and I found there was a difference between how they take care of the terminally ill cancer patients and what the quality of care is in our country. So I decided to do something that is similar, to improve their quality of life. So this idea started from there.

Paul: Are you Government funded or are you a charity?

Amal: We are a non-governmental organisation. We are a charity and we don't get any funding from the Government. Our funding is from the local community and international and national donors.

Paul: What is your vision for Bethlehem?

Amal: Our work is aiming to be all over the Palestinian Authority. Our vision is that life is a gift from God and therefore it should be kept pain free as much as possible using our knowledge and skills. The Society activities are aimed to be free and affordable to the patient who needs them and not only for the patient who is able to pay for them.

Paul: Is medical care very good in the Palestinian Authority?

Amal: For cancer patients we have very good health insurance and we have specialised people who take care of the cancer patient, for chemotherapy and for radiotherapy. All the treatment is free for the patient, but the problem is about the quality of life of those cancer patients; about pain management, symptom control and family care and patient care. We have a deficiency in these issues, so you find the patient in terminal illness suffering from pain, suffering from a load of symptoms. They need special care from the social worker, the psychologist and the nurse who are specialised in palliative care. We don't have this speciality, so when we did the research over all the West Bank, we found the quality of life is a grade of 40 out of 100 because of loads of symptoms, the financial difficulties, the stage of the disease and the fatigue. The problem is still very big because the patient, even if he got his treatment, they didn't get any attention to the other parts of the patient. We should look at the patient as a whole: psychologically, physically, spiritually and socially.

Paul: This is providing dignity for people who are in their last days.