In Loving Memory: Virginia Businessman’s Donation to Hospital in Gaza By Reilly Holder

When beginning his search for a fitting way to honor his wife’s dedication to healthcare, Lightfoot reached out to PCRF founder Steve Sosebee to inquire about the organization’s needs. As a longtime supporter of PCRF, he decided to donate a hospital room, a vital contribution to the infrastructural development of the Dr. Musa and Suhaila Nasir Pediatric Cancer Department in the Gaza Strip, to honor his wife’s memory.

Established in 1992, the PCRF is a volunteer-based nonprofit organization founded by Sosebee and founding head social worker Huda Al Masri following the first intifada. The initial objective of the PCRF was to safely bring Palestinian children to receive free healthcare treatment in the United States. Through the hard work of volunteers and the support of donors, the organization has been able to grow and implement a wide scope of healthcare projects to meet community needs within Palestine. The organization is made up of a medical advisory board of about 150 doctors and nurses with various specializations. “Those are all volunteers who go on missions and give their time away from their families and their work to operate on children and build up the health sector,” Sosebee explained.

BILL LIGHTFOOT, a Northern Virginia businessman, recently donated a family hospital room to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) in honor of his late wife, Mary Purington Lightfoot, who passed away from cancer. As an RN nurse who often helped treat children, Mary Lightfoot was passionate about advocating for the safety and well-being of Palestinians.

As a non-profit organization serving a marginalized population, the PCRF relies on crucial investment and commitment from donors and volunteers to provide medical care for hundreds of children in Palestine each year. “We don’t build something to walk away from it,” Sosebee explained. “We continue to provide child life services for patients and their families. We train the doctors and nurses and provide chemotherapy drugs. We do things that the Ministry of Health should be doing but can’t due to the lack of resources.”

Since the launching of the Dr. Musa and Suhaila Nasir Pediatric Cancer Department in 2019, Sosebee has persisted in growing vital healthcare opportunities in Palestine. Sosebee states, “When [Bill Lightfoot] offered to make a donation, we obviously have the need there, and we were able to match his donation with the need in the department. And we commemorated that by having his wife’s name covering the sponsorship of a family room in Gaza in the department.”

The Mary Purington Lightfoot Family Room adds to the cancer department’s different areas of patient services. It provides families with a suitable place to help them sustain their resilience and emotionally recharge during stressful times.

Although Israel has a universal healthcare system, Palestinians living under Israeli occupation experience extreme difficulty in accessing Israel’s health services.

According to Sosebee, “[Palestinians] don’t have access to Israeli health services unless there’s financial coverage. And even if there’s financial coverage— which is difficult to obtain because it’s very costly—the Palestinian Authority must pay for it, [and] they have themselves their own financial challenges. In addition to that, those patients and their families need permits to travel to access that care.”

The need for establishing a self-reliant, local infrastructure to effectively respond to healthcare needs in Palestine is essential because the Israeli government often arbitrarily delays and denies permits for Palestinian patients. According to the 2022 World Health Organization (WHO) report “Health Conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem, and in the Occupied Syrian Golan,” the healthcare fragmentation and financing to the occupied Palestinian ter- ritories has created a significant gap in treatment accessibility for Palestinians needing medical attention. Within the current political context, creating readily accessible health care services in Palestinian communities offers hope and greater opportunity for improving outcomes.

Sosebee is aware that advocating for Palestinian families and providing services within Palestinian communities, even healthcare service, can be fraught with unpredictability. Voicing a concern about PCRF being allowed to continue operations in Palestine, Sosebee said, “We’re concerned that the behavior of the Israeli government will not match in any way the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people…That they will block and prevent even organizations like ours, which are not political and not religious, but focusing on the humanitarian needs of children.”

Since the non-profit’s establishment, the PCRF has treated thousands of children each year. It has earned the highest 4-star rating from Charity Navigator for 11 years and has expanded its offices across the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Beirut and Jordan. The PCRF has established projects, such as the Pediatric Cardiac Surgery Program and the Gaza Amputee Project, to meet the unique needs of children who routinely experience traumatic violent conditions. In 2020 the organization began a mental healthcare initiative to support children suffering from psychological trauma and behavioral problems because of violent occupation and restrictive systematic inequalities.

The organization is always looking for new ways to strategically advance care to their patient services. Sosebee states that “in plastic and reconstructive care, there’s a need to do a breast reconstructive surgery for women with breast cancer in Gaza. Nobody’s doing that. We want to do that.”

Every year United States taxpayers provide $3.8 billion to fund Israel’s military occupation against Palestinians. Lightfoot hopes that the PCRF’s commitment to equity in Palestine inspires other Americans to advocate against the continued subjugation of Palestinians. Lightfoot asserts, “I think [that] as Americans…we have a special obligation to try and help the [Palestinians].”

For more information about how to support the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, visit the PCRF’s website <www.pcrf.net>. ■