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Jan. 26, 2007
Health care for all Ashdod
Doctors, political leaders, rabbis join to launch medical centre.
SHLOMO ALMOG
Responding to an imminent medical crisis in Israel's bustling port
city of Ashdod, a group of Israeli medical professionals, Knesset
members and rabbinical leaders have joined forces to create the
Ashdod Emergency Medical Centre.
Over the past decade, Ashdod (located 50 minutes south of Tel-Aviv)
has transformed itself into Israel's fifth largest city, based on
a huge influx of new immigrants from the former Soviet Union, North
Africa, Ethiopia and, most recently, France. Ashdod is also home
to the country's second largest port facility (after Haifa), as
well as Israel Defence Forces military installations and many other
industries, including high-tech. But, so far, repeated efforts to
fund the construction of a full-service hospital in the region have
failed – jeopardizing the lives of nearly 230,000 residents.
Unlike most central and northern Israeli cities, which possess a
variety of full-service hospital facilities, Ashdod has none. On
average, it takes at least 40 minutes and often longer by car –
especially during rush hour – to arrive at the nearest hospitals
to the south and west of Ashdod.
According to the most recent statistics, there are 28 emergency
rooms (ERs) throughout Israel, with only three located in the entire
southern section of the country, which holds 64 per cent of the
Jewish state's territory (from Ashdod southward to the Negev and
Eilat). Ashdod doesn't possess a single ER facility, even though
100 people a day in Ashdod require emergency services. Children
are also unable to receive pediatric emergency care.
Most importantly, Ashdod doesn't have the capability to handle victims
of terror attacks. The city's busy port facilities and sensitive
military installations have already experienced several terrorist
incidents, where trauma victims had to be evacuated to hospitals
that were at least 40 minutes away, greatly increasing the risk
of permanent injuries or even death. And since the IDF's withdrawal
from Gaza, Palestinian terror groups have been feverishly working
on securing long-range Kassam rockets that would put the entire
Ashdod region within reach. Ashdod is located less than 20 miles
from the Gaza Strip.
Recognizing that a medical catastrophe was only a matter of time,
Refuah v'Yeshuah, an Israeli nonprofit organization, marshalled
the support of top business, medical, political and rabbinical leaders
in order to create the Ashdod Emergency Medical Centre, a 160,000-
square-foot, state-of-the-art emergency medical centre that could
provide the community with a wide range of vital medical services.
The project's board of directors, trustees and management team recently
met formally for the first time to discuss the facility's accelerated
building program. The group reviewed the progress on the $32 million
facility, which is slated to serve its first patients in late December
2007. Based on the recommendations of committee members, the medical
centre will feature an emergency and trauma centre, women's health
centre, pediatric emergency clinic, gastroenterology institute,
eye clinic, ambulatory surgery centre, imaging centre, dialysis
centre, physiotherapy services and an institute for preventive medicine.
"We have found and funded a way around the politics, so we
can get things moving forward," said CEO Nachman Widislavski.
"Even with this private initiative, it has taken us four years
to get all of the proper licences to erect this facility. We had
to start from somewhere and, because the needs are so acute, we
were able to get some of the most renowned people in Israeli medicine
to assist us with our project."
Prof. Saul Shasha, whose Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya treated
1,871 casualties during last summer's war with Lebanon, compared
Ashdod's situation with that in northern Israel.
"The Ashdod region absolutely resembles the Galilee region,
where we are located," he said, "because Ashdod will soon
be within range of Kassams or Katyushas from Gaza and it is extremely
important that Ashdod possess an emergency room that can handle
a mass casualty event. I'm only too happy to lend my expertise to
this project because bringing sophisticated and essential emergency
medicine to a city like Ashdod only enhances the quality of life
in the region."
Rabbi Yisroel Meir Lau, chief rabbi of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, was even
more emphatic about what the Ashdod centre means to him and the
entire region.
"This is the first time I was ever asked to be directly involved
with such a project, which I see as nothing less than a holy mission,"
he said. "I am honored to be a part of it. We're talking about
preserving the sanctity of life. I got involved with this project
because I know that we can solve this problem in Ashdod right now."
To learn more about the Ashdod Emergency Medical Centre, visit www.ashdodmc.com.
Shlomo Almog is an Israeli freelance writer.
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