Adalah Submits Petition to the Supreme Court Demanding the Operation of Family Health Clinics in Lagiyya and Hura

On 26 January 2004, Adalah submitted a petition to the Supreme Court of Israel demanding that the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ministry of Finance (MOF) allocate the necessary physician and nurse positions needed to operate family health clinics in the villages of Lagiyya and Hura in the Naqab (Negev). The petition was filed on behalf of 2 mothers, and 3 couples, Palestinian Bedouin citizens of Israel, living in Hura and Lagiyya. Additional petitioners are Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, the Galilee Society, the Regional Municipality of Lagiyya and in Adalah's own name. The petition was prepared by Adalah Attorneys Marwan Dalal and Morad el-Sane.

According to the MOH, the role of family health clinics is to prevent infectious diseases through immunizations, to facilitate the early detection of health problems through regular check-ups, and to provide training and guidance to the local community for a healthy and disease-preventative lifestyle. Additional functions of family health clinics are to provide guidance to women on general health issues, domestic violence, and family planning.

Currently, there is one family health clinic operating in Lagiyya that provides health services to some 11,000 people who reside in the town as well as in other surrounding unrecognized Arab villages. The average annual birth rate in Lagiyya stands at 260. In 2003, there were 1,345 children between the ages of 0-6 living in Lagiyya; the number of children aged 0-14 stood at 2,934.

At present, there is one family health clinic operating in Hura that provides services to its 7,000 inhabitants as well as to Palestinian Bedouin citizens of Israel living the surrounding unrecognized villages. In 2003, there were 1,695 children between the ages of 0-4 living in Hura; the number of children aged 0-14 stood at 3,899.

The petition include affidivates of women from Hura regarding the poor services of the existing clinic in the town, due to its incapacity to provide comprehensive preventive treatment, as required under the law. The MOH regulations require that a family health clinic be established in any community with at least 30 births per year. The clinics currently operating in Lagiyya and Hura are extremely overcrowded, causing substantial harm to the quality of health services that they provide. On various occasions, the MOH has acknowledged the need to establish and operate additional clinics. The MOH has also recognized the lack of suitable health services that currently exist in both villages. While the MOH constructed an additional clinic in each of the towns, to date, it has failed to operate them claiming a lack of necessary funds to finance physicians and nurses.

In the petition, Adalah argued that the MOH's failure to operationalize the two new clinics in Lagiyya and Hura is illegal and violates the right to life, to health, to dignity, and to privacy. Adalah emphasized the necessity of staffing and operating these clinics, particularly noting that the Arab Bedouin living in the Naqab have the highest infant mortality rate in Israel: 17.1 per 1,000 births, as compared with 4.7 per 1,000 births among Jewish Israelis living in this region.