The residents of the unrecognized villages have little access to medical care. Of the 45 villages, only 11 have clinics present in them. These clinics are marred by the lack of 24-hour electricity, often making the storage of medicines needing constant refrigeration impossible. To make matters more difficult, the clinics are often staffed by non-Arabic speakers, creating not simply a language barrier, but a barrier of trust as well. The segments of the population most often in need of medical attention, children and the elderly, often speak little or no Hebrew.
In addition, many Bedouin women do not speak Hebrew and are illiterate, making diagnosis and thus treatment that much more difficult, as they cannot express medical problems sufficiently, nor can they read what doctors recommend. Furthermore, the clinics are not equipped to deal with medical emergencies, and so in these cases, the nearest hospital is Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva. Magen David Adom, the Israeli ambulence service, refuses to enter the villages, and so in cases of emergencies, even reaching the hospital is a major challenge.
The clinic in the recently-recognized village of Abu Kaf, recognized under the Abu Basma plan.
