UK pharmaceutical business donates medicines to Palestinian hospital

AN East Midlands based pharmaceutical business has donated medicines worth £85,000 to support cancer patients in a Palestinian hospital.

Medicine manufacturer Morningside Pharmaceuticals, based in Loughborough, donated 3,000 packs of Oncology drug Capecitabine tablets to charity International Health Partners (IHP), which in turn will distribute the medicine via a charitable NGO to a hospital in the Gaza Strip.

The medicine, which can be prescribed as part of a patient’s chemotherapy treatment, is being provided to Shifa Hospital.

Shifa Hospital provides almost 70 per cent of the public medical services in Gaza in peacetime and almost 90 per cent of the emergency medical services during the war and in times of unrest.

It is the largest public hospital out of a total of 14 hospitals in the Gaza Strip and serves 100,000s of patients every year, including almost 300,000 outpatients and about 50,000 inpatients.

Chief executive at Morningside Pharmaceuticals Dr Nik Kotecha OBE said: “According to the Lancet, cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the Palestinian territories, accounting for 14 per cent of deaths, which is predicted to increase.”