Life-giving medical training to remember a tragic death

Project Rozana has created two new fellowships for Palestinian doctors to train in Israel.

In a region where tragedy, killing and grief often lead to more tragedy killing and grief, something exceptional happened this month.

Aiia Maasarwe, a young Palestinian-Israeli woman murdered in Melbourne in January 2019, was honoured with the awarding of two fellowships for Palestinian physicians to train in Israeli hospitals.

 The Aiia Maasarwe Memorial Medical Fellowship Program (AMMMFP) is an initiative of Project Rozana, an international NGO headquartered in Melbourne. Its purpose is to build relationships between Israelis and Palestinians through health.

Dr Ruba Rizik, of the Al Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem, will go to Sheba Hospital in Tel Aviv to train in paediatric intensive care, a specialty desperately needed in the Palestinian territories.

There are only 10 paediatric intensive care beds in the West Bank and Gaza, serving a population of about two million children under age 15.

Rizik, from East Jerusalem said, “If someone told me during my residence program that I would one day be in a followship for paediatric ICU I wouldn’t have believed them. It’s a very difficult field to work in. It’s like stepping into a minefield. You need to be awake 24/7 and make quick decisions that can affect your patient’s life.

“The most rewarding part is when you have a very critical patient that you have been working on day and night and you have the ability to save his life, and send him back to his family, it’s the most beautiful feeling you will have in your life.”

Rizik said it was difficult for a Palestinian to study in an Israeli hospital without external funding. “Project Rozana have helped me realize my goal by starting a fellowship in Sheba, and also helped me learn Hebrew by enrolling me in classes that can enable me to do this fellowship.”