Israelis do their part in Haiti

January 17, 2010 - 9:44 AM by David

Members of the Israeli rescue team free a man trapped in rubble in Haiti.

Along with dozens of other countries, Israel is doing its share for the victims of last week’s horrifying earthquake in Haiti as our story in ISRAEL21c shows.

An El Al Boeing 777 and an IDF plane landed on Friday with 250 Israeli medical officers and nurses for a 90-bed field hospital, which includes a full surgical unit and is able to treat 100 patients at a time. The team includes 40 doctors, including a psychiatrist, 20 nurses, 20 paramedics and medics, 20 lab and X-ray technicians and administrators.

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The large field hospital established by the IDF Medical Corps on Saturday was already treating dozens of patients four hours later, according to its commander, Lt.-Col. Dr. Itzik Reiss.

He told Israeli media in a conference call on Saturday night that
children with severe fractures set only with cardboard arrived at the hospital for treatment. Some young patients had been freed from rubble but had to have limbs amputated due to severe gangrene, he said. Within a few hours, operations were performed.

The hospital has an emergency room, pediatric, orthopedic, internal medicine, obstetrics and surgery departments, clinics and other facilities. The Israeli facility has enough equipment to function for about two weeks.

The IDF’s Medical and Rescue Team were also part of the delegation, with two teams from the Oketz canine unit pressed into action, including at the UN headquarters in the capital where there was hope of locating and extricating survivors.

In addition, four members of the ZAKA rescue unit arrived in Haiti at the end of the week with two Mexican rescue specialists aboard a Mexican Air Force Hercules cargo plane, immediately after completing their work in recovery and identification last week in the Mexico City helicopter crash that killed philanthropist Moshe Saba and four others.

More known in Israel for being first on the scene at terror attacks for the thankless task of identifying and retrieving body parts, the team, deployed at a collapsed multi-story university building, managed to extricate eight students from the rubble over the weekend.

“You have to understand that the situation is true madness, and the more time passes, there are more and more bodies, in numbers that cannot be grasped. It is beyond comprehension,” said Mati Goldstein, the head of the delegation wrote in an email to ZAKA headquarters in Jerusalem.

Goldstein called the weekend a “Shabbat from hell. Everywhere, the acrid smell of bodies hangs in the air. It’s just like the stories we are told of the Holocaust – thousands of bodies everywhere.”

AP reported that when 19-year-old Josyanne Petidelle was pulled out of the rubble after being buried for three days, among the first to check her was an Israeli.

Doctors and nurses flocked to the woman to drip water into her mouth and intubate her. Dov Maisel, a doctor who had just arrived from Israel, said she appeared to have internal injuries. Her condition would be assessed at Port-au-Prince’s main hospital, he said, “But I think she’ll live.”

Readers who would like to contribue to Haiti relief efforts can go here.

Tags: , , , , , • Category: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Social Justice, health 

Comments

2 Comments on Israelis do their part in Haiti

  1. Gershon on Sun, Jan 17th 2010 6:01 PM

    2. The anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli sentiments are continued to dominate European media. Today’s Euronews coverage of rescue efforts in Haiti never mentioned the presence of IDF Medical and Rescue team. Even, when showing Israeli rescue workers (could be recognized by their uniforms) in their news footage, Israel’s extraordinary contribution never mentioned. No surprise for Israelis and Jews around the world…Please speak out!

  2. ronnie on Tue, Jan 19th 2010 1:53 AM

    3. CNN finally had Israel hospital in Haiti covered in a story.

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