Bethlehem Arab Society Rehabilitation

Today I visited an inspiration place, the Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation, a medical facility that is providing world-class treatment and care in the most difficult circumstances. BASR offers comprehensive medical and rehabilitation services to the people of Palestine, irrespective of gender, age, religion, and social class.

I had heard about BASR from Embrace the Middle East, which provides financial support to one of the programmes. They suggested that I would find a visit to BASR of interest.

I spoke to Rima and Raneen, from the Programme and Project Development Office. They spent time telling me about BASR. It has a strong focus on children with disabilities, but has expanded the services to  provide wider medical services to meet the needs of the community. They offer a wide range of state-of-the-art medical services e.g. Psychology, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Audiology, Speech and language Therapy, Pediatric Psychiatry, Vision rehabilitation, Orthotics and Prosthetics, Rheumatology, Traumatology and Orthopedics, Cardiology, Endoscopy, Osteoporosis Prevention, Intensive Care, Ophthalmology, E.N.T and Radiology.

BASR is moving from a medical model to a social model, and so it extends its services into the community by offering community based rehabilitation services. Teams travel around to see families where they live and seek to enable them to be self-sufficient and independent.

I heard about some of the particular issues facing BASR. They are working to international standards of social inclusion and are pressing for legislation in Palestine to ensure that employers and school accept people with disabilities. However, such legislation is of low priority compared with other political issues and so progress with the human rights legal framework is disappointing. 

BASR is a national nonprofit, nongovernmental organization recognized as a national referral and resource rehabilitation and surgery hospital concerned with tackling the emerging health needs of the Palestinian population, with special focus on people with disabilities. They get many referrals for treatment from the Palestinian Authority, but the payment for these services lags far behind the services offered. Financing the demand for all these services is particularly difficult within the Palestinian economy.

The cultural and political context in Palestine means that there is a great deal of trauma among children. They have also encountered a lot of child abuse. The Psychosocial Intervention Programme aims to help traumatised, abused and neglected children, children with disabilities and victims of the ongoing conflict. 

I was then taken to the BASR main facility and was given a tour by Anas. It was good to see this excellent facility working to the highest standards despite all the difficulties.

As always with such visits, I find people working positively, to high professional standards and showing strong perseverance to overcome the problems they encounter.