Israeli surgeons repair young Palestinian hearts

By Allyn Fisher-Ilan

HOLON, Israel (Reuters) - Her lower lip quivering with every breath, Hala Ketnani, a 10-month-old girl from Gaza, sleeps beneath an oxygen hood in an Israeli intensive care unit as she recovers from heart surgery.

She had been unable to have the operation in Gaza, where many hospitals are suffering from worsening conditions since a Western aid embargo was imposed this year to pressure a Hamas-led Palestinian government to recognize Israel.

Under the private Israeli program "Save a Child's Heart", doctors at Wolfson Hospital near Tel Aviv repair congenital heart defects for children like Ketnani from the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Jordan and Africa.

More than 1,000 children, about half from Gaza and the occupied West Bank, have been helped so far by the program, which is partly funded by the European Union.

"I'm so happy to see the color returning to Hala's cheeks," said the baby's grandmother, Raisa Ketnani, 65, clasping her hands together in a prayer-like pose. "I am very thankful."

Israeli soldiers and settlers quit Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year military occupation, but a substantial number of Palestinians in the territory still rely on either Israel or neighboring Egypt for humanitarian needs such as medicine.

The need has risen in the past year with a drop in medical care levels in Gaza and the West Bank since Hamas, an Islamist group, took office after a January election and Western nations cut off direct funds to the Palestinian Authority.

Though it generally denies entry to Palestinians since they began an uprising in 2000, Israel says it eases the restrictions when it comes to medical care.

Shlomo Dror, an Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman, said about 1,000 Palestinians per month receive medical treatment in Israel, up from 600 in recent years.

SECURITY SCREENING

Entry permits for children in need of medical attention in Israel are usually approved in a matter of days, although adults are subject to security screening, Dror says.

But Hala's grandmother, who accompanied the infant from Gaza, said she had brought her granddaughter after the baby's mother was denied a permit to enter Israel.

Dror had no immediate comment on that case. He said if a sick child's parent poses a security problem, Israeli authorities allow another relative to serve as an escort.

Israel has stepped up the screening since a recent suicide bombing at a Gaza checkpoint by a woman who had sought medical care in Israel, and a bomb found on another woman, Dror said.

Uriel Katz, an Israeli cardiologist, said Hala suffered from a ventricular septal defect -- a hole between the left and right ventricles of the heart.