Military’s top medical officer: “The IDF has never treated Israeli citizens, even during the country’s hardest years.”
IDF coronavirus ward open in Rambam’s underground parking lot, Oct. 2020
(photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON’S UNIT)
The Israeli military on Sunday opened its first coronavirus ward at the underground parking lot of Rambam Hospital in Haifa as part of the national fight against the deadly virus.
Opened as part of “Operation Tribe of Brothers” the ward will be staffed by a team of some 100 doctors, paramedics, nurses, and medics from the military and will treat patients in moderate to serious condition.
The ward was opened in a ceremony headed by Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein, Deputy Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, Chief Medical Officer Brig.-Gen. Prof. Alon Glazberg, and the Director-General of Rambam Hospital Dr. Michael Halbertal.
The personnel underwent professional and comprehensive training by Rambam staff over the past week “at dizzying speeds” said Glazberg. They come from all over the IDF’s medical corps, with some doctors specializing in certain fields like internal or family medicine and nurses specializing in emergency medicine.
According to Glazberg, while most of the personnel come from training bases, it would be a “challenge” to provide medical care to soldiers in those units.
“The system will pay a big price,” he said.
Over the past two weeks, the hospital’s underground parking lot has been transformed into patient bays that can treat some 770 patients. It will be under the command of Col.Dr. Erez Karp, the former deputy-director of Beersheba’s Soroka Medical Center and Chief Medical Officer of the Northern Command.
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According to the Defense Ministry, some 70 patients, most of them in serious condition, are currently being treated in the facility.
“The IDF has never treated Israeli citizens, even during the country’s hardest years,” Glazberg said. “We give humanitarian aid, including our neighbors in Syria but never to Israeli citizens.”
Gantz, who toured the facility prior to its opening, said that he was “proud” that the IDF’s medical corps will be working inside a civilian hospital because while “we have a health care system with excellent manpower and good infrastructure, to be honest, it does not have the necessary resources and required manpower” to deal with the pandemic.
“We are working to fill a decade-long gap of neglect,” Gantz added. “You can’t sweep it under the rug, it’s lying there, a decade of neglect that’s now dealing with an epidemic.”
According to Halbertal, the officers are a “force multiplier” which would free up the hospital’s staff for other needs.
Israel currently has 62,206 active cases and 1,941 people have died.
Speaking to reporters Halbertal said that the wards will function for the coming months, especially during the winter months. Halberthal said that the infrastructure for the wards was built following the Second Lebanon War in 2006 when many buildings in northern Israel did not have protected spaces from rockets.
“We can’t now look at citizens in their eyes and say we can’t provide. This location, which is three stories, provides us with parking during regular days but during times of emergencies and war- and this is a war against corona-allows us to provide care to patients.”
While the military had originally said that the IDF decided to collaborate with the hospital in Haifa due to the high number of cases in Israel’s north which had been hit particularly hard at the beginning of the second wave, that’s no longer the case.
According to Gantz, there’s been a “significant reduction” in confirmed cases throughout the country because “most Israeli citizens obey the regulations.” But, he said it comes “at the heavy cost of harming the economy and society” which needs to be addressed.
Halberthal told reporters the fact that military officers are working shoulder to shoulder with hospital staff is a “big message to Israel,” but it “doesn’t diminish the fact that everyone should be responsible” in combating the virus.
“We cannot forget for one minute that this situation didn’t have to happen. It’s in everyone’s hands to do the most basic…like wearing masks, keeping proper hygiene, and social distancing,” he stressed. “We could have prevented this.”
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