Alexandra Mann
On Tuesday morning (Feb. 2), the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Maj. Gen. Benny Gantz visited a training exercise at the IDF Medical School at the Tzrifin military base. The tour of the school, which educates medics for service in IDF bases, for field paramedics, and also serves as officers' course for soldiers with a degree in medicine, was attended by the Head of the Technological and Logistics Directorate, Maj. Gen. Dan Biton, the Chief Medical Officer, Brig. Gen. Dr. Nahman Esh and numerous senior medical officers of various IDF Corps.
The exercise began with the call of a Muezzin and gun shots from all directions. Soldiers jumped out of an IDF vehicle and stormed a building. Someone was injured. Some of the soldiers evacuated the injured to a safe place and the others covered for them. The doctor arrived and asks what happened, and begins with the treatment. The medics who came with him cooperate exceptionally well. They opened his windpipe, took pressure of his chest, and put on an arterial tourniquet. The soldier's condition slowly became stable, and they prepared him for his evacuation while informing the battalion aid station over the radio that it will be receiving a soldier needing immediate treatment.
Maj. Gen. Gantz toured the training site while receiving explanations from the commanders on the base. The objective of the exercise is to train the medical personnel for emergency situations and work under pressure.
Dr. Uriel and the Mikro-Resuscitator
The responsible doctor at the battalion aid station is Lt. Dr. Uriel, 31, married with two children, who immigrated to Israel from South America when he was twenty, entered the IDF academic studies program. A few months ago he completed his studies and arrived at the Medical School for his officers' training. Besides handling the medical operation in an exceptional manner, Dr. Uriel retold how he witnessed a very serious traffic accident last week, and provided initial medical treatment for the injured until Magen David Adom teams arrived at the scene to evacuate them.
He says: "The path is long and difficult, but it makes me feel good to treat and help soldiers." Among the equipment at the aid station is the Mikro-Resuscitator, a device developed by the IDF Medical Corps and Impact Instrumentation Inc. in New Jersey, which autonomously resuscitates injured people who cannot breathe independently for whatever reason. Here again, special emphasis is set on the cooperation between the medical teams, the doctor, the paramedics and the medics, in order to practice joint work for emergency situations.
The tour continued onto the officers' tent, which has been turned into a field operating room. "It is amazing to see how in Haiti, too, we built a tent like this and used the same methods that are taught here. It is the same treatment, we carried out a Caesarian section on a pregnant woman under those exact conditions, and the operation was successful," explained Sgt. Dan Eren, one of the Medical School's instructors, who returned from Haiti last week with the IDF delegation.
The medical team working in those operating rooms includes ten people, most of them doctors and nurses in their civilian lives, and IDF medics who also serve as drivers. There are a number of teams like that in the IDF that always stay the same which is favorable for the cooperation within the team.