Passage through Palestine in eyes of my grandfather

In my last article I explained why it’s a good idea to keep a journal. I’ve been doing so for quite some years, at least hoping that my grandchildren will find something of interest in what I have written about.

I say this aware that in the 1940s my grandfather Robert Bischoff kept a meticulously written record of how he and his wife, plus their two children – one of them my mother Gaby – left their lovely home in Bucharest, Romania, in January 1941.

They decided to depart as anti-Semitic Fascist dictator Ion Antonescu had seized power there, and German troops were already present in significant number.

My grandfather wrote his journal in Romanian, and many years ago I took it upon myself to translate it into English. His text filled 38 typed foolscap pages, with very long sentences strung together in paragraphs that were also unusually long.

While Romanian was the first language I spoke after I was born, I never studied it formally and from when I arrived in Britain at the age of three I switched to English.

But I was fluent enough to take on the task, even with no dictionary and no Internet to consult at the time. What a labour of love it was.

For long, my grandfather – like many others at the time – was hesitating over whether the Romanian scene would increasingly make life unbearable for Jewish families like theirs.

At first he was more with the optimists, but eventually the situation deteriorated to such an extent that the decision to emigrate was made.

He worked under great stress over many weeks to obtain the necessary paperwork for the departure, not least the transit visa for Turkey and the entry visa to their final destination Palestine (before it became Israel), and finally they were ready to leave.

They travelled by train from Bucharest to the Black Sea port of Constanta; by boat from there to Istanbul; then on trains across Turkey and Syria; and next through Lebanon – by bus from Tripoli to Beirut and from there by car into Palestine, to Haifa and on to Tel Aviv, arriving on 19th January, eight days after leaving Bucharest.

The last entry in the journal is from November 1946, by which time Robert’s daughter Gaby had met and married my father Bruno, who had left Romania a few months after the Bischoff family, to rejoin Shell – for whom he had been working in Romania.

His journey was infinitely more precarious, in a small and flimsy yacht that for over 52 days took him and his fellow crew members to Cyprus and from where he managed to transfer to Palestine. (My father, as captain of the boat, kept its log – also in Romanian – so I have the full details of his adventure too… a story for another day.)

Robert found my father to be “a courageous young man and sure of himself”, and he was happy to see him marry his daughter. Now let me jump to March 1945, when I was born.

“I had the feeling that this would be an exceptional child, from all points of view,” my grandfather enthused.

“This feeling, and our exaggerated sentimentalism, make us see in him all that can be most beautiful in life. I could speak in detail about him, and there would be many pages to fill. If I were to do it I would have to devote a chapter separate from all the others, though sincerely speaking, I don’t even know if I would be able to put in writing what I feel in reality.”

He wrote about so much else in his journal, about the threat of a German invasion following the arrival of its army in Alexandria and the withdrawal of the British from Egypt – making him wonder if they should perhaps have remained in Romania; about the fragmented nature of local politics, with so many political parties – as is the case in Israel today; and about the poor state of education and nutrition.

Reading the journals again – thanks to my grandchildren having developed an interest in the holocaust – makes me wish I would have engaged more with both my parents and grandparents about their earlier lives. So you know how this is going to end: do so while yours are still around.

• The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery estimates that 98 percent of people residing in emerging countries, including Kenya, lack access to multi-specialty surgical services.
• The commission further describes this access to the services as including timeliness, safety, affordability for patients and an adequate capacity by providers.
• This gap forms a good starting point for pursuing the implementation of a multi-specialty growth strategy by clinics and hospitals.

It is an inherent ambition for most healthcare facilities to, over time, increase their scope of services in order to serve a wider catchment population whilst providing a broader array of clinical services.

However, the conundrum that most healthcare managers grapple with is on how, where and what specific activities to pursue in order to actualize this desire in a cost effective and, ultimately, productive manner.

The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery estimates that 98 percent of people residing in emerging countries, including Kenya, lack access to multi-specialty surgical services.

The commission further describes this access to the services as including timeliness, safety, affordability for patients and an adequate capacity by providers. This gap forms a good starting point for pursuing the implementation of a multi-specialty growth strategy by clinics and hospitals.

It is important for healthcare managers to digest available datasets in order to elucidate the characteristics of the disease burden surrounding their health facilities. Such datasets are available both internally and externally.

Internally, records of disease profiles attended to in the facility will be of use; especially of cases that eventually required referral to another center due to non-existence of the needed clinical services.

Externally, the Kenya Health Information System is a freely available online database that contains information on disease burden by type and location in the country. Also, there are specialty-wise medical journal publications that bear extensive information on various disease burdens.

As an example, one may establish that a general outpatient clinic in a hospital setting saw many patients with backaches and of these, the MRIs done showed that most of the patients had spinal compressions but were not definitively attended to due to the unavailability of a neurosurgeon or an orthopedic surgeon specializing on the spine.

The next step would be to consider setting up a spine clinic running on specific days wherein patients presenting with such back problems can be booked into. At this stage, a consideration may be made to invite a visiting specialist doctor to run the clinic on those specified days.

It is worthwhile that during this introductory phase, patients are informed on the need to subscribe to a health insurance scheme so as to limit their need for out-of-pocket expenditure and increase the affordability of such highly-specialized care.

As these occur, the healthcare manager should be forecasting on the supportive services that are required along this specialty line and making plans for the accompanying capital and operational expenditure.

If these cases require surgical interventions, this planning should be around ancillary requirements such as the availability of surgical instruments and implants, staffing cadre, rehabilitative services such as physiotherapy and so on. It helps a great deal to involve input from a specialist in the particular field.

Whereas this example covers a surgical specialty, the same data - driven approach can be applied in all other facets of medical specialties to ensure that an iterative and productive growth approach is undertaken.

The writer is a healthcare leader and geospatial epidemiologist

• The High Court has dismissed a suit filed by minority owner of Bluebird Aviation who accused his partners of siphoning more than $1 billion (Sh108 billion) from the airline through tax evasion, fraud and money laundering.
• Justice Alfred Mabeya brought to an end the five-year court battle pitting Adan Abdi Yussuf against three other owners of the 29-year-old airline.
• The judgment came after the Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI) cleared three shareholders and executives of Bluebird — Hussein Farah, Unshur Mohamed and Mohamed Abdikadir — from financial malpractices after a nine-month investigation.

The High Court has dismissed a suit filed by minority owner of Bluebird Aviation who accused his partners of siphoning more than $1 billion (Sh108 billion) from the airline through tax evasion, fraud and money laundering.

Justice Alfred Mabeya brought to an end the five-year court battle pitting Adan Abdi Yussuf against three other owners of the 29-year-old airline.

The judgment came after the Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI) cleared three shareholders and executives of Bluebird — Hussein Farah, Unshur Mohamed and Mohamed Abdikadir — from financial malpractices after a nine-month investigation.

The investigation followed a criminal complaint from Mr Yussuf against his fellow shareholders, accusing them of fraudulently channelling massive funds out of the company as part of a money laundering scheme.

Justice Mabeya dismissed Mr Yusuf’s allegations, saying he failed to prove claims of fraudulent accounting, tax evasion, fraud and money laundering.

“In the present case, all that the plaintiff did was to make sweeping allegations without any backing by way of evidence. He only stated that he had carried out investigations and made discovery of the allegations he made,” said the judge.

“The documents that were produced were not authenticated to prove any of the allegations made against the defendants.”

Mr Yussuf, who claims to own 25 percent of the charter airline, argued that more $1 billion (about Sh108 billion) has been stolen and put in offshore accounts and investments in Western capitals after being transported physically out of the country without declaration. He said the three directors were using the airport passes granted for restricted areas in airports to move the billions.

The DCI dismissed the secret movement of cash at the airports, arguing its investigation and probe by Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) found no evidence of money laundering.

The Financial Reporting Centre through the DCI said it failed to detect breaches while tracking the flow of cash in and outside Blue Bird Aviation.

Mr Yussuf claimed that his partners were stashing proceeds from the airline in international banks under Amazon International FZE. But Justice Mabeya said his partners had sufficiently showed that their relationship with Amazon was purely commercial.

“That the plaintiff had failed to demonstrate the directorship or shareholding of the defendants at Amazon or that they had stolen money from the Company and deposited the same at Amazon’s accounts,” he said.

“No faithful director exercising independent judgment would take any of the said measures, none of which are beneficial to the Company. In fact, all the steps taken by the plaintiff were contrary to the success of the Company. They were meant to sound a death knell on the company,” he added.