• Healthcare

Healthcare

The entrenched conflict in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) has altered social welfare and health care delivery systems in ways that pose challenges beyond those seen in other conflict or post-conflict situations. Having valid and reliable information on population health is essential for effective implementation and management of public health programs. Yet, a large portion of the disease burden and risk factors in the OPT cannot be accurately measured given that adequate tools for the assessment of survivors of chronic exposure to violence – individuals and societies – are lacking. The challenge for researchers, planners, policymakers and health care practitioners consists of improving the empirical understanding of well-being and its determinants in order to rebuild the needed social protection systems.

Using the ‘WHOQoL-Bref’ instrument, this paper assesses the quality of life of Palestinians and its determinants and compares the results to similar assessments from 17 other developed and developing countries. The PQoL aims to measure not just individual quality of life, but also the social quality, or more appropriately, the ‘social suffering’ as a dynamic concept that integrates the multiple determinants (economic, social, political, and cultural) of health and well-being of a society.

Key concluding points include:

• this study clearly indicates that Palestinian quality of life is ‘very poor’. If one also considers the timing of the fieldwork (December 2005) amidst the worsening economic and security situation, this intimates the magnitude of the imminent humanitarian disaster 
  
• these results are an indication of the need for more contextually and culturally appropriate model of QoL for the social, environmental and psychological domains for the occupied Palestinian territories 
  
• this study may be seen as an example of how treating a conflict as a broad public health problem may lead to a change in the conceptualisation of the outcomes to be explained as well as the international response to be undertaken 
  
• attempts to measure the social suffering of populations stricken by complex emergencies are therefore part of an overall approach that places the demand for rights and justice at the center of public health.
  

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