.svg)
.jpg)
“What we have here is, I would say, some kind of miracle, really,” says Gidon Melmed, executive director of the Hadassah Offices in Israel, as he shows Hadassah supporters around the underground emergency hospital at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem.
Melmed is just one of the Hadassah leaders in Israel featured in the March 26 Crisis Under Fire video briefing, which Hadassah CEO Ellen Finkelstein describes as a “behind-the-scenes view of their current reality,” while welcoming the 350 households that tuned in to the online briefing. The update is a firsthand look into how the lifesaving care at Hadassah hospitals and Youth Aliyah villages continues, even during war.
In the 40-bed facility, Melmed says there’s a nurses’ station, storage area, washing facility and staff area. There’s even a pharmacy. The staff, he says, are on hand 24/7 and really make the care patients receive possible, “together with each and every one of you in the United States and worldwide.”
Prof. Yoram Weiss, director general of the Hadassah Medical Organization, shares impressive numbers: more than 400 patients moved to underground areas, 13 operating rooms at the Sarah Wetsman Davidson Hospital Tower at Hadassah Ein Kerem and 130 patients being treated at the underground facility at the Gandel Rehabilitation Center at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus.
“We are here for the population of Jerusalem in our underground facilities, in our aboveground facilities, in our clinics, in our operating rooms, everywhere life continues, and we will continue, and we will prevail,” Prof. Weiss says.
At Hadassah Mount Scopus, Dr. Smadar Eventov-Friedman, director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, shows off the tiny babies in incubators and in the Intermediate Care Unit. Fifteen babies had been transferred from the hospital’s sixth floor to the underground NICU on February 28.
It‘s not easy, according to Dr. Sinan Abi Lail, head of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, when very sick babies need to be treated and their families need to be supported as well. The families are doubly stressed, coping with the challenges of having a premature baby and living through war.
“Everyone feels very safe here,” says Dr. Rivka Brooks, director of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, of the children, parents and staff in the underground facility that’s equipped with 15 pediatric beds and four high-dependency beds. Children of all different backgrounds, Jews and Arabs alike, are being cared for. “Everyone’s here during a siren,” she says.
Elisheva Levine, head nurse at the Rady Mother and Child Center, Labor & Delivery, who moved the ward down to the current underground space, shows viewers Room 10, which is equipped with everything a woman needs to give birth comfortably and also doubles as a safe room, with an additional door to seal the room off from overhead missiles.
When the first siren sounded on February 28, Hadassah Neurim Youth Aliyah Village was in full Purim celebration mode, according to the village’s director, Ami Magen, who appears on camera in uniform. Magen is currently on reserve duty, along with several other staff members.
The staff’s initial response was to create a sense of safety in a moment of confusion. Next came the complicated task of sending students home.
Magen says that for the some 50 remaining students — most from the Naale program, some without a family support system — “the village is home.”
They engage in daily activities, such as sports, cooking, art and music, to maintain routine, spirit and a sense of normalcy.
Magen sends his gratitude to Hadassah supporters: “I would like to thank you for your support, your care and the love you send us; it’s deeply felt here.”
“Our collective work is not only lifechanging, it directly saves lives,” says Hadassah National President Carol Ann Schwartz in closing.
