Success story

Amal Kamel scans the crowded kidney dialysis department, jotting down notes in her notebook. A mechanical engineer with the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MoH), Amal is designing a new kidney dialysis department for the Palestine Medical Complex (PMC), the first Palestinian medical city, located in Ramallah.

For Amal, effective design is essential to quality health service. "Everybody knows that doctors save lives, but we engineers also have a key role to play in building sustainable public health," Amal explained "Visiting this old unit motivates me. Seeing the patients crammed together makes me push harder to finish a new unit that will ease the burden on our patients."

MoH professionals like Amal are taking the lead in improving public health care, through an ambitious partnership between USAID and the MoH. With the support of the $86 million USAID Palestinian Health Sector Reform and Development Project (known as the Flagship Project), the MoH is empowering public health staff to take action to ensure quality care. Guided by MoH priorities for reform and development identified with Flagship Project support, skilled mid-level professionals are taking ownership of long-term health sector reform and - through new linkages to other health providers – are learning how to make the public health system
better serve the Palestinian population.

Changes are happening fast. In response to the MoH’s focus on improving medical waste management, Amal has introduced an innovative response to a serious public health risk caused by MoH treatments for diabetic patients.

The MoH helps diabetic patients manage this common chronic disease by providing dialysis, which removes the excess minerals that water kidney failure leaves in their blood. However, with many MoH hospitals lacking an adequate liquid waste disposal system, dialysis units, like the one in the PMC, are forced to dump the dialysis fluids directly into public drains, posing a grave threat to community health, particularly during winter floods.

In the process of designing the new PMC dialysis department, Amal was introduced to a simple but effective best practice in dialysis waste disposal by the Flagship Project, which is supporting the MoH to develop a Ministry-wide medical waste management system. Amal was able to tour the dialysis clinic at the Augusta Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem, a Flagship Project grantee, where a low-cost and easily produced chlorine and water decontaminant is added to dialysis waste to eliminate infection risk in the public drains.

Enthusiastic, Amal won MoH support to incorporate this best practice in the plans for the new PMC dialysis unit. According to Amal, such small, innovative engineering interventions would pave the way for sustainable medical waste management and sustainable infectious disease prevention for both the community and public health. "USAID has inspired us to make things happen," she said. "It’s not only the fresh ideas but the feeling that we individually can make impact."

The Minister of Health has since formally approved study tours for MoH
professionals to the Augustus Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem to learn about other best practices that can be integrated into the public health system.
"I feel proud as part of a new generation at the Ministry— working to bring the highest quality services to the Palestinian community." Amal said.