World Vision has helped to open a new clinic in Bethlehem that gives residents access to comprehensive health care for the first time. The clinic offers services previously unavailable to residents in the Al Ma’asara area, and also to some 7,700 residents in villages clustered south of the city.

A joint project of the Ministry of Health, the German Bank, United Nations Development Programme, and World Vision, the Al Ma’asara Clinic provides an emergency room, child immunization, family planning, a women’s health clinic as well as a pharmacy.

World Vision serves a diversity of communities in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and projects such as the Al Ma’asara Clinic underline the common need for a better and healthier future for all families, regardless of race or religion.

“We’re alike because we all care about the health of our families,” says Joe Harbison, National Director for World Vision in Jerusalem-West Bank-Gaza. “We all want a good education for our children, we all want to live in peace, and we all want to build a brighter future for our children.”

The Al Ma’asara Clinic is an example of World Vision’s broader work towards better health for children. This work is being highlighted during World Vision’s first global child health campaign—Child Health Now—which promotes the Millennium Development Goals to globally reduce maternal and child deaths. The campaign is addressing the unacceptable reality that 8.8 million children under five die each year of preventable causes.