U.N. Group Gets Report on Israel’s Welfare Service to Arab Citizens

The Government of Israel plans on spending 1,935,000 Israeli pounds–approximately $1,224,000–for rural health centers to serve areas inhabited predominantly by Arabs. Druzes and Bedouins. The rural center project is one of a number of other scheduled Israeli welfare and health service expansions coming before the program committee of the United Nations Children’s Fund, which opens a series of sessions here tomorrow.

This year’s chairman of the UNICEF program committee is a member of the Israel delegation here, Mrs. Zena Harman. However, the Israel-UNICEF collaboration preceded Mrs. Harman’s election to that post–second highest in the UNICEF organization. The Israel projects, including the rural health centers, are among recommendations made to UNICEF by the group’s executive director, Maruice Pate.

Mr. Pate’s report recommends that UNICEF contribute $54,000 over the next three years to help Israel in further expansive of its maternal and child welfare training and services: Against that sum, the government of Israel would spend a total of 2,546,000 Israeli pounds, approximately $1,414,000.

UNICEF has already spent a total of $136,800 in cash, plus other expenditures for freight and transport, to aid Israel in developing its maternal and child welfare services and training, according to Mr. Pate. The result, the UNICEF chief said, has been a decrease in Israel’s infant mortality from 51.9 out of a thousand live births in 1949 to 35.8 in 1953.

Israel’s aim, in this field, Mr. Pate’s report shows, is the provision of complete preventive health services to the entire country. The nine rural health centers included in Mr. Pate’s recommendations would be established in the Sharon Valley, in Galilee and in the Negev. Two of the centers will be in the south, in the Negev, and will serve nomadic Bedouin tribes who, according to the UNICEF chief, “are being encouraged to settle permanently in areas of their own selection.”