Health Expert Jumana Odeh Earns AidEx Humanitarian Hero 2013 Award

The AidEx 2013 Humanitarian Hero award has been awarded to health expert Jumana Odeh, director and founder of the Palestinian Happy Child Center, an NGO in Ramallah that protects and promotes the well-being of children with intellectual disabilities.

The award is part of the annual humanitarian and aid AidEx event held this year in Brussels and seeks to honor the commitment of those working with the international community.

Dr. Odeh is a pediatrician, public health expert and director of the Palestinian Happy Child Centre. She chose not to go into private practice but rather to work for low wages at government hospitals in the West Bank, following this with seven years service as a hospital pediatrician at Augusta Victoria Hospital and then Makassed Hospital, which are the largest public hospitals in Jerusalem. Dr. Odeh next volunteered as a primary health pediatrician and project manager for the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, a well respected grassroots organization, which focused on the delivery of medical services to reach West Bank villages and communities.

She worked with UNICEF, participating in their national programming to improve the quality of medical care given to Palestinian children, following this with a series of consultancies with Western organizations, including Save the Children/USA, the Swiss Development Cooperation, the Australian Red Cross, OXFAM, the International Development Research Center/Canada, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP-UK) and Belgian Technical Cooperation (BTC) – Jerusalem.

In 2000, Dr. Odeh joined the faculty of the School of Medicine and the School of Public Health at Al-Quds University as a lecturer, where she teaches to this day. In 2001, Dr. Odeh began a four-year consultancy as Senior Child Health Advisor with MARAM, a public health project funded by Pricewaterhouse Coopers/USAid. In 2004, Dr. Odeh joined the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health in London as a child care advisor.

Dr. Odeh has participated as an expert at more than 40 international workshops and conferences, and in numerous evidence-based studies of the psychological impact of military occupation on children and youth. She is a frequent writer for the International Herald Tribune and for the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, and has appeared as a child/health expert on Al-Jazeera, Abu Dhabi TV, CNN, BBC and Ted Koppel’s “Night Line.” She was also recently selected as 2008 honoree of the World of Children Health Award, the ”Children’s Nobel Prize”, becoming the first Arab to receive such an important award.

Institute of Community and Public Health Holds a Lecture on the Palestinian Happy Child Center

The Birzeit University Institute of Community and Public Health hosted the on May 7, 2015, the founder and director-general of the Palestinian Happy Child Center Dr. Jumana Oudeh.

In her opening statement, Oudeh presented statistical data related to children and people with disabilities and special needs, as there are worldwide about 600 million people with disabilities, which constitutes about 11% of the total world population and 25% of the total population that include the families of those with special needs. In Palestine, children under age of 18 constitute about 50.2% of the total population, while 2.3% of the community are considered with limited thinking, and 7% are in the broader sense autistic, disabled and with special needs.

Oudeh gave a briefing about the center, which offers 11 programs and about 90 weekly sessions for various needs, in addition to other services needed by the Palestinian community, noting that the center has outreached 39 thousand Palestinian children, some of which are disabled or with special needs.

Regarding the difficulties and constraints encountered by the center, Oudeh said that due to the absence of a real infrastructure, which hinders the work machinery, in addition to the impact of the political situation, which led to the shortage of specialists and lack of training opportunities for those working in the field.

Oudeh added that in spite of these difficulties, yet we achieved a lot, in terms of being internationally recognized and managed to network with several international and regional institutions. Moreover, the center has created a suitable environment for the children and managed to integrate them into the Palestinian community, she added.