There is an interesting fight going on right now with Magen David Adom and the Haredi community. As per instructions from the government, MDA initially switched their forms for blood donation (and other forms) from asking for the names of the donors father and mother to asking for the names of parent 1 and parent 2.

911. 9-1-1. 

The news is reporting that the investigation into 150-200 Breslavers who returned to Israel from Uman with, allegedly, forged PCR tests has been canceled.

No, there's no app for that!

According to a report on Reuters, Bezeq is going to be collaborating with Magen David Adom, MDA, to replace payphones in phone booths around the country, that are no longer in use anyway, with defibrillators.


I think this is absolutely fabulous but I wonder if these defibrillator stations will take asimonim phone cards? And Will Clark Kentovsky still be able to use the booth to change his outfit and become Superman?


But really, all kidding aside, it is a great way to turn these into something useful and even save lives!


According to Reuters, In the event of a heart attack, a bystander could call the emergency services number and be directed to the nearest defibrillator booth, while an ambulance is dispatched. The defibrillator is locked and can only be opened with a code.

If you think you have symptoms of the COVID-19 CoronaVirus and want to get yourself tested, MADA will be running a "drive-thru testing center in the Bet Shemesh Western Industrial Zone (in the parking lot of the Police Academy - perhaps Hightower himself will do the testing!) for people to get tested. The drive-through will be open from 15:00-20:00. No double matinee though.

I don't think you can just go get tested, but have to have a valid concern, such as symptoms or having been in contact with someone who has tested positive. If you suspect you need a test, be in touch with Magen David Adom (dial 101).

MKs Moshe Gafni and Uri Maklev (UTJ) has proposed a law by which all official emergency services will be accessible by calling one hotline, instead of having separate numbers for each as the situation is now. All emergency service providers included by the appointed member of government (not sure if this will be a minister or a clerk of some sort) in the official list will be included in the access to the number. As well, the phone call will be free with a human responder.

Gafni says he proposed this in the past government as well, but when the government folded and called for new elections, his proposal went away as a casualty of war.

The proposal passed its initial reading by a vote of 54-0 and will be sent to committee to prepare it for voting into law.

The law is being dubbed the "911 law". Ichud Hatzalah in particular is happy about this, as they are hopeful to be included in the list, despite being opposed by MDA for any official status until now.
source: Kol Hai News

yasher koach!

I received the following notice and perhaps it might be of interest or relevance to someone here..

MDA in Jerusalem is recruiting civil service people to a variety of positions (e.g. ambulance, office, hotline, etc.).
Somebody interested in this should contact the civi; service coordinator, Moshe Rozmarin, at 054-849-0054.
This Civil Service is designated for yeshiva students above the age of 22 years old, whether married or single.
Two tracks are available:
1. full service - 12 months, 8 hours per day
2. partial service - 24 months, 4 hours per day

No previous training necessary. Over the course of the year, the civil servant will undergo a paramedics course, for free. 

I don't know any more than what is in this notice. If it is relevant to you or to someone you know, best of luck. And, pass it on.

Mea Shearim: No Entry For Female Paramedics

  -- Mynet

stupid people all around. I get not ordering female paramedics in advance, but if that's who shows up, I would think pikuach nefesh should override their hang-ups... though MDA should have done better - sending female paramedics to Mea Shearim, especially to an emergency in a mens mikvah, is pretty stupid.. I wonder if an incident like this would qualify as the "hadarat nashim" recently defined by the Justice Ministry that would net a 1 year prison sentence...

The people of Elad have a serious problem.

The truth is that the people of Elad have a lot of problems. The city has had a lot of political problems and fighting and the residents have suffered because of it, largely in the way of unprovided city services and lack of budgets for important things. According to Bechadrei, they have a very specific new problem.

The city of Elad has to go through a series of budget cuts for the coming years due to past problems and debts. It turns out that one of the items being cut is the ambulance service with MDA. In August 2012 the contract with MDA was not renewed, though despite not being paid, they have not removed the ambulance form the city and have continued to provide the services to the 45,000 residents of Elad. In the new budget, it was discovered, the entire item has been removed - there is no money at all budgeted for MDA services.

The decision to remove the item from the books for the upcoming budget has angered residents and councilmen. If MDA will remove the ambulance from the town and stop providing services, something very likely to happen if no money is being budgeted for that, it will mean the city has abandoned the residents to waiting 20 minutes for an ambulance to arrive from Petach Tikva in a situation of need.

The solution I thought I had does not exist. At least, it has not yet been tried and proven to work. So that is off the table. It seems that Elad needs a serious overhaul.. Since the beginning of Elad they have had nothing but trouble there...

Some interesting law proposal votes yesterday:

• MKS David Rotem and Robert Iltov (Yisrael Beiteinu) proposed a law that would knock 50% off of Bituach Leumi payments to Israeli citizens who were involved in acts of terror against Israeli citizens and residents and who have been sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.
  Under the current law, all sorts of payments are withheld if the cause of the payment is created by the involvement in the act of terror (such as handicap from an explosion). The current law also only withholds the payments form people convicted to life sentences.
  The proposed law, if it should pass, would set the bar at a 10 year sentence, and would broaden the type of payments that will be lessened or canceled. The law passed its first reading yesterday.
  
  
• A new law was passed requiring all companies that qualify under the requirement of employing a "fleet manager" - someone to manage the "company cars" - to also stick stickers on every car saying something to the effect of "How am I driving?" with a shortened phone number clearly printed on the sticker so it can be easily read.
  
  According to Globes, this law was scheduled to be voted on and passed a few weeks ago, but some MKs were hesitant when they realized it would mean their own cars would have to bear these stickers. Eventually they consented, and now they are so obligated as well. According to the proponents of the law, this is one more thing that will hopefully encourage drivers to drive more safely, thus hopefully lowering the number of traffic accidents in the country.
  
• The Knesset passed the final readings of the proposed law that would allow the army to fight against the secular girls who lie to get an exemption from army service by claiming they are religious. The new law places the burden of responsibility on the young woman receiving the exemption - she would now be obligated to inform the army if her religious status should change during the time of her two year exemption.
  Meaning, if she claims to be religious, thereby receiving an exemption form the army (plenty of religious girls serve in different capacities - she only receives a religious-based exemption if she so requests and applies for one), if she should stop being religious during the 2-year period of her exemption, she would have to report her change to the army, and begin serving.
  Until now, the young woman would only have to declare being religious, and after that it was up to the army to keep track, if it so desired, and find out if she is really living a religious lifestyle.  The army often did such investigations, and found, frequently enough, that girls who had declared themselves as religious for exemptions were either not really so or had at best stopped being religious (by "at best" I mean that possibly they did not lie on the original application).
  
  The new law will prevent these young women from lying in order to get the exemption, as they will be responsible for not reporting their true lifestyle..
  
  I am not quite sure what the actual benefit is. I get that girls might not want to lie if they know they might be caught and punished, though at the end of the day the army is still going to have to follow and investigate the girls to find out if they are lying and not reporting lifestyle changes or not, just like they had to until now. The only difference is in the punishment that would happen after such an investigation. Perhaps the psychological aspect of the shift of responsibility is enough to stop the lying.
  
  
• Americans who make aliya are often confounded by the way to alert the emergency services in israel. Americans are used to calling 911, describing the emergency and the emergency center makes the decision what type of emergency service to alert and send to the scene. in Israel there is no unified emergency system. If you need the police you call 100, for MDA you call 101, and for the fire services you call 102. In a moment of emergency, it is not so easy to remember which number to call. Native Israelis have it easier, as they grew up knowing the right numbers, but immigrants often get confused.
  
  Under the proposed law, proposed by MK Moshe Gafni (UTJ) which passed its first reading, the emergency services would all be blanketed under one phone number, 112 f the law should pass, similar to the 911 service.
  
  The law is not being proposed to solve the confusion of the olim who can't remember the right phone number. The intent of the proposed law is to make the dispatch of emergency services to emergencies more efficient. Another benefit of it is to solve a problem that occurs in some areas in which a number of ambulance services operate - sometimes as many as 4 or 5 different emergency organizations. In those situations, the information about a situation, when called in to 101, is often only relayed to MDA, and not to the other ambulance services that might be able to respond quicker in a given situation. The new law would connect all the emergency services, and then the quickest solution would be effected.
  
  MDA opposes the law, saying that they provide such fast service because they are able to get out so quickly. they say they average 4.5 million calls a year, with an average response time of 7 seconds. That number seems ridiculously fast and I don't know how it is even physically possible. Maybe it means from the time they get the call until the ambulance driver starts running to his ambulance. It is impossible for the ambulance driver and team of EMTs to get to the ambulance, start the engine and drive to wherever, no matter how close they are, in 7 seconds. It must be referring to the time of their first reaction. MDA says such a system would delay the delivery of the information of an incident to them, thus delaying the arrival of the medics to the person who needs that ambulance as quickly as possible.   

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In an unusual story, two 16 year old boys delivered a woman's twins when she went into labor on her way from Bet Shemesh to Jerusalem recently.

Births in ambulances are nothing unusual. The distance to Jerusalem is significant enough, especially when there is traffic, but not only, that not always can they get to the hospital in time. As the city continues to grow, it increases the need for a local hospital or birthing center.

So, the ambulance picks up the woman in labor, a mother of five kids already, with two on the way out. The paramedics in the ambulance, besides for the driver, were two teenage volunteers.

As they got to the Harel interchange, the ambulance had to pull over to deliver the babies. With the teenage volunteers regularly escorting expecting women to the hospital, this was the first time they would find themselves delivering a baby on the side of a road (or anywhere for that matter). To their credit, they rolled up their sleeves and did a fine job bringing those twins into the world. Mazal tov! And kol hakavod to these two volunteers, both for being volunteers and doing great work, and for staying calm and doing what needed to be done under difficult circumstances.

You can see more of the incidents details on Ynet..

A nice follow-up to the story is that the boys later went back to the hospital to pay a visit to the woman and her twins. The parents had bought a present for the MADA volunteers that had helped them, and also promised to invite them to the kids eventual bar and bat mitzvah parties. They also took the opportunity to view the incident as a bridging opportunity, considering the recent tensions between dati leumi (the community the teenagers are from) and haredi (the community the family is from) communities in Bet Shemesh.

As nice as the story is, I am surprised that there would be just two teenagers working the back of an ambulance and no adult volunteer along with them. As well, it highlights the need for a more local solution for giving birth.

Picture Of the Day




the volunteers of the rescue organizations were prepared last night for a mass casualty event with the El Al plane having technical trouble, and everyone being concerned it might crash.

As I said, they are crazy..

The Bet Shemesh branch of the Eidah community suffered a serious blow on Shabbos-Yom Tov when their leader and rav, Rav Rosenberger, collapsed during the hakafot. It seems he had a serious stroke and was in critical condition for a while (it seems his situation has stabilized).

The MDA team came to resuscitate him and take him to the hospital for care, and according to this report, his students surrounded the ambulance arguing about which hospital they would let MDA take him to for care. It seems that some students were against his being treated in Hadassah, the preferred hospital of the MDA team, because of the recent tension between the extremists and Hadassah.

Sanity prevailed when Mrs. Rosenberger asked MDA which hospital is best suited to treat his problem. They said Hadassah and she then insisted that that is where he would be treated.

I guess they felt they know better than even the Gaava"d of the Eidah who was also hospitalized last week and chose Hadassah, despite the recent tensions, because of it being the most appropriate for his needs.

That was only the beginning. After getting all that worked out, they still fought with the ambulance team regarding who would accompany Rav Rosenberger to the hospital. MDA rules say only one person, a family member, can accompany the ill in the ambulance. An extra student jumped in and fought with the MDA driver. Eventually they got rid of him and continued on their way, after calling the police, and after the driver himself got injured from a dorr being slammed into him when evicting the student.

All this fighting while their rav is unconscious and in critical condition after collapsing in front of them, causing delays in his receiving treatment. They are lucky they didn't kill him in the process by delaying his receiving the care he needed!

We have all heard the story of the baby who was born on an airplane and was awarded free flights for life.
I have no idea if it ever actually happened and if it did if the kid really got free flights for life.

I, and I knows others have, have plotted in my mind numerous times how to get my wife on board a flight in the last stages of pregnancy, the point they generally do not let women fly, to try to qualify for the free flights forever prize.

The newspaper yesterday reported a story that happened on the Metropolin bus line traveling from tel Arad to Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva. Shortly before the bus was due to arrive at the final bus stop, the bus driver Gil Arieli heard moaning from the back of the bus. After taking a look, he realized a woman was in the late stages of labor.

Arieli pulled the bus over and told everyone to get off. He moved the woman and her husband to the back of the bus and prepared to deliver the baby.

The husband refused to allow him to do anything and then Arieli pulled out ahis EMT volunteer card from MDA. He has been a volunteer for over 30 years. The husband calmed down and let him get to work.

Arieli delivered the baby girl on the bus with nothing more than rubber gloves as equipment, according to the article.

A team from MDA arrived on the scene to remove her and her baby to the hospital. Arieli said this was his 9th delivery as a volunteer for MDA.

The Executive Director of the Metropolin Bus Company sent a letter to the mother wishing her well. In the letter he informed her that the child will have free transportation on their bus lines for the rest of her life.

Now the bus company just needs to stay in business long enough for the kid to enjoy that... (a lot of these small bus companies open and close all the time)