24 December 2022
Dear friend,
I hope this message finds you and your families safe and well this Christmas.
In this season of peace and goodwill, it is impossible not to reflect on what a tumultuous year 2022 has been. Conflicts, natural disasters and economic uncertainty have pushed more and more people into crisis the world over, while the support available to them is stretched ever more thinly.
For the Palestinian communities MAP serves, global challenges compound the already-precarious circumstances in which they live. This year has been the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005. After 15 years of blockade, people in Gaza face unthinkable hardship, insecurity and psychological devastation. In Lebanon, 93% of Palestinian refugees now live in poverty, with many unable to afford medicines, or skipping lifesaving treatment to avoid accumulating debts.
I would like to pay tribute to MAP’s amazing staff in Palestine and Lebanon, for whom these challenges are not just a feature of their day jobs, but the harsh context in which they live.
It is thanks to their tireless work this year that women in the northern West Bank can for the first time access quality breast cancer diagnostic and treatment services in one local unit, without having to navigate long journeys and checkpoint delays. In 2022, MAP’s team in Gaza have organised more medical missions than ever before, with expert volunteers from the UK training more than 460 Palestinian health workers in an array of specialties. In Lebanon, MAP has fostered a new partnership with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health to improve neonatal care and help identify and address developmental delays in babies.
All of this and more, while also responding rapidly to emergencies year-round.
You are an indispensable part of this team, and the only reason any of this remarkable work is possible at all. I therefore want to express my most heartfelt thanks to you, our supporters, who continue to stand by MAP and the Palestinian people through crisis and adversity.
Together you are helping bring light in the darkness, and health and dignity to those who need it most.
I wish you all a very happy Christmas.
Baroness Morris of Bolton,
MAP President
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