Mehadrin Hatzalah, soon to be more Mehadrin

Many years ago, when we first moved to Bet Shemesh, there was a big problem in the neighborhood. RBS was brand new and had no local branch of MDA or Hatzalah. When a person needed emergency medical care, he would have to call MDA. MDA would then send the ambulance from Bet Shemesh.

The problem was threefold:

1. The fact that the drivers had to come from BS meant a minimum delay of care for at least a minimum of 7 minutes that it minimally takes to get from BS to RBS, if not more.
2. The ambulance drivers, as was true of most people in BS at the time, were not familiar with the streets of RBS. They had to drive around and hope to find somebody who could give them directions to the location of the call.
3. For about the first two years RBS was being populated, the City did not put up street signs. This enhanced the problems above, as it made it even more difficult for the drivers, already unfamiliar with the streets, to find their destination.

My wife decided during that period of time, that she would volunteer for MDA and be a local RBS EMT so when calls went out for RBS, she would at least be able to get the drivers there quicker, along with being available locally. She took the course and volunteered many hours and nights going out on ambulance shifts.

Eventually, Hatzalah opened a local RBS branch. When my wife approached them about volunteering for them, they would not accept her because they have a policy of no women volunteers.

The policy was upsetting. We understood the policy, as men might be uncomfortable being treated by a woman. Also, uncomfortable, and halachically problematic, situations might come up in the ambulance while on duty. But on the other hand, do only men call hatzalah? If it is uncomfortable for a male patient to be treated by a female volunteer, what about a female patient being treated by a male volunteer? And shouldn't the pikuach nefesh aspect of it override any such problem?

But that is the way it was.

It seems that an all-male Hatzalah is no longer good enough. Te Skverer Rebbe has now called for the establishment of an all-female Hatzalah to work alongside the all-male hatzalah.

The article below is where the Skverer Rebbe makes the suggestion. The article is in Yiddish, and my Yiddish is weak, so I only picked up bits and pieces of it, but someone explained to me generally speaking what is in the article. I am posting the pdf of the article so anybody who understands the Yiddish can read it for themselves.

Skvere Hatzalah - Upload a doc

Read this doc on Scribd: Skvere Hatzalah

I do not understand the call for a separate all-female Hatzalah. It seems completely out of place.

Imagine the scenario - someone calls Hatzalah for help. The dispatcher asks if the patient is male or female. The caller says female, so they dispatch the call to the female Hatzalah.

Then what?

These women, mothers of children, possibly nursing or pregnant - are they going to be carrying heavy equipment? Are they going to be able to lift a stretcher with a heavy patient?

Are they going to be able to drop their families, their kids, a nursing baby, and go out for a few hours to treat someone, take them to the hospital, etc.? Does that mean the Haredi public (especially the Rabbinate) will now make it acceptable for women to drive - so they can drive ambulances?

And what happens if someone calls and says the patient is a female, the female team gets there and finds the patient is a man (let's say the caller got confused, or even did it maliciously). What will they do -refuse to treat the patient and call for the male team to be sent out?

It does not seem like this newer, more mehadrin version of Hatzalah is something that is realistic.