Maternity and paediatric care reaches isolated mothers and infants

In the early morning in Bethlehem, five days a week, the ‘Mobile Clinic’ of the Order of Malta’s Holy Family Hospital hits the road.  With a gynaecologist and a midwife on board the Mobile Clinic ensures that essential maternity and paediatric care reaches women and infants in even the remotest corners of its neighbouring villages in the Judean Desert.  The Mobile Clinic is recognised by those in need as it stops on roads, literally in the most isolated of rural outposts, where mothers know that they can go and seek the medical and antenatal care they need free of charge, and will not find elsewhere.  Emergency cases are transported to the hospital in Bethlehem.

An average of 195 women are examined each month through the maternity hospital’s Mobile Clinic, which has witnessed outstanding success rates and a great demand that continues to grow.

Families in the neighbouring villages of Bethlehem are often living in dreadful conditions – in shacks and tents without sanitation, light, heat or clean running water.  The clinic enables medical and social care to be brought to the doorsteps of mothers who are unable to travel to the Order of Malta Hospital and would otherwise go without even basic medical assistance.

The Holy Family Hospital is an institution of the Order of Malta and is the primary maternity hospital in the Bethlehem area.  It provides care regardless of religion, race or means.  The Mobile Clinic of the Holy Family Hospital has been running since 1995.