At the invitation of the Minister of Health, Dr Fathi Abu Moghli, and Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), IMET 2000 sponsored a group of UK experts in burns treatment to evaluate the existing burns service in Palestine.  The UK team comprised: Mrs Jo Myers, a leading nurse in this field; Dr Keith Judkins an experienced burns anaesthetist, past President of the British Burns Association; Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta a Palestinian-born plastic surgeon with long experience of burns treatment and of the situation in Gaza; and Professor Colin Green who has been active in researching  novel treatments for burns over the past two decades.  Together with the MAP projects manager Ms Esperanza Shaman, Dr Anas Abu Safa and Mr Ammar Sbouha representing Rafidiyah Hospital in Nablus and the Minister of Health, the team toured the West Bank in August.  They were welcomed by the Government Hospitals in Nablus, Ramallah, Hebron and Beit Jalla as well as Al Makassed in Jerusalem.  They also spent time in Ibu Sina Nursing School to look at specialist training for nurses in the care of burns patients.  Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta had visited Gaza in January 2009 and due to difficulties in access, the team had to evaluate the needs there from telephone conferences with Dr Nafeez Shaban in Al Shifa Hospital and what had been seen earlier during the Israeli New Year assault.

As a result of this assessment tour and the subsequent report submitted by the combined MAP-MOH-IMET 2000 team, the MOH have requested detailed plans and recommendations for building fabric, equipment and specialist training to upgrade the Burns Unit in Rafidiyah Hospital in Nablus, and start up new Burns Units in Aliyah Hospital in Hebron Sheikh Zayed Hospital in Ramallah and the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza.  As the first step in a 3-5 year plan, IMET 2000 is hosting an 8-day visit to the UK for 10 Palestinians (chosen by the MOH to lead the future Palestinian Burns Service).  The programme of site visits and workshops (16th-24th January 2010) is very intensive at the end of which it is intended that a comprehensive set of protocols and plans for the future will be presented to the MOH.  This partnership with MAP is proving really rewarding; they are providing the equipment and structural funding, and IMET 2000 the long-term specialist training and preventive education programmes.