Every day at Augusta Victoria (Al -Mutawab) Hospital in occupied Jerusalem, between 80 to 90 patients from the West Bank governorates, he arrives daily to undergo radiation therapy sessions from different cancerous tumors, and these patients recently started treating the “linear speed” device that enters artificial intelligence technology, and whispered to the hospital, the Qatar Development Fund.
Inside the section, Al -Jazeera Net met two sick people from the city of Nablus in the north of the West Bank, and they are subject to sessions in the radiation therapy unit after they were diagnosed with breast cancer and lymph nodes.
Samar Amira, who was diagnosed at the Al -Mufli July 2024 Hospital, said that most of her feels comfortable is the hospital’s endeavor to enter modern techniques in treatment and keep pace with development.
“When I heard about this new device, I felt a great blessing, and I believe that he would give accurate results and contribute to our recovery from the disease,” added Samar.
As for Yoliana Zainuddin, who comes from Romania, she arrived at the hospital to undergo the 14th session of radiation therapy out of 16 sessions, and said that the most reassured during the session is the sound of the low device, and the lack of little pain.
Yoliana has lived since 1990 in Nablus after her association with her Palestinian husband, and she says that she has gone through a lot of great health setbacks, but she never thought of heading to Romania for treatment of any of them, because of the presence of “good doctors in all of Palestine, and because the staff of the Al -Mufli Hospital specifically receives patients with a smile and exchanged with them the limbs of the conversation, which supports us patients and makes us able to challenge the disease and recovery From him.
Raise healing opportunities
The doctor in the radiation therapy department, Abdel Moneim Al -Khatib, accompanied Al -Jazeera Net to the room where the new device was placed, and we briefed the mechanism of its operation and the techniques through which he works, and said that the oncology centers that dealt with patients with this device noticed that it gave a great effectiveness compared to the previous devices.
This event is to relieve side effects, because the device is able to determine the radiological field more accurately as it works with artificial intelligence technology, and it has proven its effectiveness in dealing with tumors that move with the breathing process, or those close to organs that move with the breathing process.
He added that “this type of tumor specifically enables the new device to focus on it and track it throughout the session period, and we also helped control the dose in each session in a better way than the previous devices.”
Al -Khatib concluded his speech to Al -Jazeera Net by defining what is the mechanism of radiation therapy, explaining that it works through intense energy packages to break the genetic bonds that control the growth and division of cells, because the cancerous cell has no ability to renew itself after breaking these ties unlike the healthy cell.
Keeping up with modern developments
For his part, the Executive Director of Al -Mufli Hospital and head of the Oncology Department of Radiation, Doctor Fadi Al -Atrash, said that the “linear wrestler” arrived at the hospital within the framework of the plan to develop his work, which is important to enhance its ability to give the latest treatments in technical terms, because radiotherapy is in a continuous development, and guarantees the development of its development to provide all modern technologies in the world to the Palestinians, which increases the chances of controlling the disease and recovery from it.
He pointed out that basic blocks were placed in the development of the radiation therapy department qualitatively, the first of which was in 2004 when it was established, then in 2011 and in 2018, and in 2025 when the new device is operating, the fourth turning point will be transferred from the work of regular technologies to artificial intelligence technology.
He added that “the importance of advanced devices is that they allow radiation to reach places that we could not reach in the past, so they can treat more than one location simultaneously and reduce side effects by relieving radiation to healthy organs, and this gives better quality of life to the patient and raises the opportunity to recover and opportunities to deal with the disease.”
Waiting for Gaza patients
The new device is supposed to increase the capacity of Al -Mufli Hospital, “and this is part of our willingness to provide this new service when our people in Gaza can reach us to receive treatment as they were before the war,” he added Al -Atrash.
The radiation therapy department in the hospital receives more than two thousand patients annually, and Gazans make up 30% of these, but more than 600 of them were deprived of arrival to receive their treatment in this section during the war.
On the occasion of the Al -Mu’tal Hospital celebrating the 75th anniversary of its founding, Al -Atrash said that this medical edifice was established in 1950 in order to serve the Palestinian people and provide health care in high quality, in a sustainable manner and dignity for the Palestinian person.
He continued: “We are still in the foreground, because the briefing made a difference in the Palestinian health system in terms of qualitative addition, whether by the quality of treatment and the ability to deal with patients, or by adding and changing the application of treatments in Palestine.”
The hospital director concluded his speech to Al -Jazeera Net by saying: “We will remain at the forefront of those who call for the Palestinian people’s medical rights and restructure the Palestinian health system in a way that makes it more sustainable, and we are partners in these efforts and leadership, and in the leadership of the East Jerusalem Hospitals Network, which is the basis for the Palestinian health system.”