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Testimony of Tahani
Assad ‘Ali Patuah, 35, married with one child, pharmacist, resident
of Nablus.
I live with my husband
and our four-year-old son in the al-Masakan al-Shabiyeh
neighborhood of Nablus.
I became pregnant again after undergoing fertility treatment. For
four years, my husband
and I waited for the new baby.
Yesterday [Friday, 12 April], marked the thirty-two-week point of my
pregnancy, meaning I
was in the end of my
eighth month. Nablus was under curfew. Around 4:00 P.M., I felt
sharp
labor pains. I told my
husband about it and said that I had to go to the hospital. He
called
the Red Crescent and
asked them to send an ambulance immediately to take me to the
hospital. They responded
that the Israeli army was not letting them move about, but that
they would try. After
about fifteen minutes passed, my husband called the Red Crescent
again. They said that
they had left the station, but while en route, the Israeli army
ordered
them to return. My
husband asked them to try to coordinate matters with the
International
Red Cross.
A few minutes later, somebody from the Red Crescent informed my
husband that they had
tried again, but that
the army fired at them and forced them to return. The third time
that my
husband spoke with the
Red Crescent, the ambulance driver said that he would take the
risk and try to get
through without Red Cross coordination. My husband asked him not to
endanger his life, and
said that he would try to contact foreign groups to see if they
could
help us. My husband
called the Tom Christ, the director of Save the Child, in Jerusalem.
He told Tom about my
situation and Tom promised that he would call some organizations
that might be able to
help us.
Around 6:00 P.M., my labor pains got worse. My husband called Dr.
Salem Tabila, an
obstetrician who lives
nearby. He and my husband, who is also a physician, delivered the
baby. A bit after 6:00
P.M., I gave birth to a boy. His condition was normal. They gave him
water and sugar to check
if he would respond to it, and he did. He was in good condition. I
was really happy because
I didn’t think that he was in danger. About fifteen minutes later,
though, his condition
started to deteriorate. He started to turn blue, and he stopped
crying.
My husband gave him
first aid, but his condition worsened. My husband was unable to save
him, and our baby died.
My husband, who saves lives on a daily basis, couldn’t save our son,
for whom he waited
so much. Our baby died
because he needed an incubator, but we couldn’t get to the
hospital, which was only
two kilometers from our house, because of the curfew imposed by
the Israeli army. Our
first son was also born prematurely, in my thirty-fifth month of
pregnancy. But he was
placed in the incubator at the hospital. Now he is a normal
four-year-old child.
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