Tag Archives: Ethan Craig

Healthcare In Occupied Palestine: The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

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The challenges of providing healthcare in an occupied territory

Steve Sosebee and Zeena Salman, MD. Photo by Steve Sosebee (@stevesosebee)

Steve Sosebee is the president and CEO of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. He’s married to Dr. Zeena Salman, a pediatric oncologist working with the PCRF. For 25 years, PCRF has been leading medical missions to help children in the Middle East, helping children get medical treatment abroad, and delivering humanitarian aid. Their recent visit to the Carver College of Medicine gave Short Coats Reem Khodor, Ethan Craig, and Nico Dimenstein a chance to sit down with them to discuss the challenges and realities of working to provide healthcare within the confines of an occupied territory.

Those challenges are sometimes gargantuan, especially compared with the standard of care children receive in the United States. For example, urgently-needed medications and medical equipment being held up in customs; children who must be separated from family members for their cancer treatment because they are not allowed to travel with adults under the age of 55; dealing with the conflicting priorities of the Israeli military and Hamas, which each govern portions of Palestine.

Their passion for the mission–offering better lives to the children of this contested land–is evident. But somehow, any frustration they may feel about the difficulties they and their young beneficiaries face isn’t. Sosebee and Salman have a strikingly matter-of-fact view of the world in which they operate, and are doing what they must for the children and families caught up in a conflict not of their own design.

We Want to Hear From You

What are your experiences with organizations like PCRF or with medical missions abroad? What did you learn from your participation?  Share them at 347-SHORTCT anytime, visit our Facebook group, or email theshortcoats@gmail.com.  Do all three!

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The Examined Life Conference

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elcOur show this time was record in front of a remarkably appreciative audience at The Examined Life Conference, and it was a lot of fun.  We talked with several presenters from the conference, including Gabriel Ledger an emergency physician who became a filmmaker when he decided he wanted to find out more about the patients he’d encountered in the ER.  We spoke with Emily White, an Iowa undergrad who has been doing research on Dignity Therapy and who no doubt has a bright future in medicine.  Toni Becker is a speech language pathology grad student whose portraiture and interviews of people with disabilities remind us of their significance.  Susan Ball is associate director of the New York Presbyterian’s AIDS care center, and shared with us her experiences as a physician at the start of the AIDS epidemic.
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The M1s Are All Right

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love me tapeworm! by kaelyn, Flickr

One week of the semester gone, and M1s Aline Sandouk, Ethan Craig, and Nathan Miller report in on their experiences.  Who’s their favorite lecturer?  They won’t say, but they seem to be alive, well, and moving right along. Also, the FDA thinks we should regulate the use of feces as a drug. How an extreme athlete who isn’t a scientist did what she always does–pushes through the pain–to discover her genetic flaw when no-one else could. A company founded by a medical student with a bioengineering background comes up with a smart, simple, easy way to treat a scourge of childbirth in developing countries–postpartum hemorrhage. And a quick plug for The Discover Fit & Health channel which continues its fine tradition of infotainment programming with “Untold Stories of the ER,” featuring a story of a woman who fed her daughter tapeworms to get her ready for that all-important beauty pageant.

Listen to Episode 041: The M1s Are All Right.
Listen to more great shows for medical students on The Vocalis Podcast Network.

The opinions expressed in this feed and podcast are not those of the University of Iowa or the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine.