At Holy Family Hospital in Bethlehem, 12 babies are born every day
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In the Christmas story, a baby is born in Bethlehem. New stories begin a dozen times a day in Bethlehem’s busiest maternity ward.
Less than a 15-minute walk from the Church of the Nativity – containing the grotto believed to be the scene of the first Noel – is the Holy Family Hospital. Since 1990, it’s been operated by the Order of Malta, a Catholic order specialising in humanitarian service.
“There’s always room at the inn,” says Michèle Bowe, the hospital’s president. “We welcome everybody without regard to their need or creed. Our patients are both Christians and Muslims, reflecting the society in Bethlehem. We subsidise services and have two social workers who can slide the scale all the way down to free so nobody would ever be turned away.”
Bowe was born in the US but grew up in Jordan. She became an economist specialising in the Jordan river Valley region and in 2017 was appointed the Order of Malta’s ambassador to Palestine.
She is proud that the state-of-the-art facilities at the Holy Family Hospital match those in Europe or the US. There are seven delivery rooms and 50 beds for mothers. There’s a mobile clinic to reach people who can’t journey to the town. In the West Bank, it’s the only hospital that can care for extremely premature babies.
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“We regularly deliver babies as small as 24 or 25 weeks weighing 500 grams and we nurture them to full health,” she says. “Our neonatal intensive care unit is licensed for 18 babies, but if we have that many and a mother comes in pregnant with a pair of twins, we’re going to make room for two more.”
The building was previously a French field hospital. Under the instruction of Pope John Paul II it was given to the care of the Order of Malta. The first baby was born there in February 1990 and on the Feast of the Epiphany in 2023, the 100,000th baby, Mohammad, was delivered.
Holy Family Hospital, Bethlehem
Now, there are around 12 births per day; 70% of babies born in Bethlehem are born here.
“Everybody’s really excited about the first baby of the day, but they’re still equally excited about the last baby of the day,” Bowe says. “I was recently in one of the labour rooms. A woman invited me in to keep her company while she was delivering, and it was so sweet to see staff who weren’t specifically involved in the care of that patient poking their head in and sharing encouraging words: ‘Oh, you’ve got this!’ ‘It’s almost time, your baby’s going to be here soon!’
“It’s a very joyful staff. They’re super dedicated and they’re just resilient. I mean, since our hospital opened, we’ve been through seven wars or intifadas.”
When conflict between Israel, Gaza and other territories intensified last year, already difficult circumstances were made much more difficult for everybody in the region, including those at the Holy Family Hospital.
Medicine has to be monitored carefully. “We are now keeping a revolving three-month supply,” Bowe explains. “A lot of the things we can source in Bethlehem or other places on the West Bank. Other than that, we have to work with the Israeli authorities to bring things in, because Palestine has no port and no airport.”
For the staff too, everyday life has become more complicated. With 220 direct or indirect members of staff, the hospital is the largest employer in the town. Many commute from settlements in Area C – territory under Israeli control in the West Bank.
“Those villages are often locked at night, and so if they’re not unlocked at a proper time in the morning staff will be late to work, and that’s very stressful. We’ve found places for people to live closer to the hospital and when things are a little more active with the war, we go to 12-hour shifts so that our staff aren’t coming and going as frequently.
The little town is home to around 30,000 people today. The number is growing, but not because of the newborns. There are three refugee camps nearby sheltering people displaced from places like Be’er Sheva or Ein Karem – places in Israel they have been pushed out of. Half of the patients in the hospital are now refugees.
Bowe continues: “The whole world is thinking about Gaza. Bethlehem is 45 miles away. If you’re Palestinian, there’s no way you can travel between Bethlehem and Gaza, so it’s far away, but the effects are felt every moment.
“There’s huge inflation for food. Gaza was a big producer of produce, fruits and vegetables, and most of their land is ruined now.
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“We’re having women come to the hospital who haven’t eaten in a day or so because they’ve been trying to feed their other children. Food insecurity is growing by the day.
“Bethlehem lives on pilgrimages and tourism. During Covid it was all closed down and 90% of the workforce had no salaries. They said it would take a generation to recover economically. They only had 18 months and this war began. Everything closed down again.
“Our births have actually fallen because of the difficulty in movement, but also because of the economic situation. Couples aren’t getting married and in a place like Palestine, people get married and then they have their babies. So those first babies are many fewer than they were before the war.”
Babies born in Bethlehem today represent hope in the same way now as two millennia ago.
Baby Maryam, a recent arrival
“To me, the most hopeful thing in the world is a new baby,” Bowe says. “It’s a promise, a commitment to the future. The next thing I find most hopeful is employment, a job, specifically a job that has training and advancement possibilities. And with our 220 employees, that’s a lot of hope.”
Unsurprisingly, Bowe feels a special connection to the Christmas story. It’s Christmas every day in the hospital of course, with every new baby born. The nativity scene is displayed in the hospital all year round for visitors to see. On Christmas Day itself, the youngest member of staff has the honour of placing baby Jesus in the manger.
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“When you walk into Bethlehem, the checkpoint is a little jarring, but you get in and you can really feel the peace and something very sacred about the place,” Bowe says. “Most everything in Bethlehem today was there 2,000 years ago. Some of the olive trees are said to be 2000 years old. The houses are made of beautiful stone, which is quarried locally. When a building comes down, the stones are picked up and reassembled.
“The people who aren’t refugees, their families have been there for thousands of years. When we walk in Bethlehem and we see the eyes of the people on the streets, those are eyes that saw the eyes that saw the eyes that saw the Holy Family.”
Last year, Christmas celebrations in the birthplace of the season were scaled back.
“Instead of Christmas parades with bagpipes, there were solemn Christmas processions,” Bowe remembers. “Money was tight. Very few gifts were exchanged, but the spirit of Christmas was strong.
“This year, Christmas will be very spartan. The meal will be simple. There will probably not be gifts, but regardless of the situation, the Christmas joy won’t be able to be contained.”
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