It’s 4pm, Wednesday afternoon
on a peaceful side street in Jaffa, Israel. Physicians For Human
Rights, an Israeli non- profit organization opens the doors of their
walk in clinic to the lines of Sudanese and Eritrean refugees waiting
on the curbside for medical attention. Since it’s establishment in
1998, the volunteer run clinic has provided medical care to over
30000 migrants and status-less persons amongst them, thousands of
Sudanese and Eritrean refugees who have been crossing the Egyptian
border into Israel since 2006.

[Shacar Shoam, Manager of Status-less Persons Department, PHR]:

We are open 5 times a week. Three times a week it’s a walk in
Clinic, which means if a person is sick he can just come in the
opening hours there will be a general doctor that he can see. We also
have a children’s doctor that is here every Friday. There are also
specialists that volunteer either coming to the clinic or see patients in
there own clinics.

PHR was established in 1987. Today, the non- profit organization
has approximately 2700 volunteers and members.
60-70% are medical staff ranging from medical students and nurses,
to famous Israeli professors. Dr. Luria is a psychiatrist and deputy
manager of the outpatient clinic at Israel’s prestigious Abarbanel
Mental Health Center.

[DR. Ido Luria, Medical Director Open Clinic, PHR]

Here at PHR at the open clinic I am the medical director of the clinic
as a volunteer and I also co-ordinate the psychiatric service that we
deliver here, and so we try to help on biological, physiological level
and also social interventions as much as we can.

[Shacar Shoam. Manager of Status-less Persons Department, PHR]:

One of the goals of PHR Israel is to promote and action that
will come from the medical community in Israel and a broader
understanding of the right to health which is not only the medical
treatment itself.

PHR have projects operating in Bedouin villages as well as Israeli
prisons. They have a mobile clinic that travels in the West Bank and
they provide medical care to Palestinians, Israelis, migrant workers
as well as refugees and asylum seekers.