The anger and frustration etched onto the faces of local citizens whose lives were turned into an instant nightmare when Grad rockets were fired from Gaza into Ashdod, Israel’s fifth largest city, this past weekend, was raw and very human.
Despite the "ceasefire", a Grad rocket fell without warning on a home along Ashdod’s beachfront on Sunday. [Naftali Kolski photo]
Last Friday afternoon, as the Ashtar family was preparing for Shabbat, a Grad rocket fell outside their house in the heart of the city. Though most of the family members were able to scramble to safety into a reinforced room, the sheer force of the explosion not only destroyed parked cars, deadly shrapnel shards pierced concrete walls, windows and human flesh. "My husband’s nephew didn’t have enough time to make it into the reinforced room. Though he wasn’t in the street when the rocket hit, his leg was hit by a piece of shrapnel that nearly severed one of his main arteries," Ronit Ashtar revealed. "
What’s particularly frustrating is that our nephew nearly bled to death because there isn’t an emergency medical facility or trauma center in Ashdod, so by the time the ambulance was able to transport him to a hospital nearly 50 minutes away in Rehovot, he had lost quite a bit of blood. Thank G-d he’ll be OK, but the hospital in Rehovot just isn’t equipped to handle a large number of patients, who might be suffering from a variety of physical and emotional traumas. Many of us are also suffering from various forms of psychological traumas because of the Grads, but we would rather ride things out at home, instead of spending so much time on the road going to a hospital that isn’t equipped to handle these incidents."
Hours after the so-called "ceasefire" went into effect on Sunday, the Asoulin family was milling about their pristine beachfront home in Ashdod when a Grad rocket plunged into their front-yard without warning. Miraculously, Mr. & Mrs. Shimon Asoulin and their five children escaped unscathed, but the nervous smiles underscored a sense of helplessness and utter frustration.
Shimon Asoulin thundered, "I don’t understand, the government is using my hard-earned tax payer monies to set-up a ‘humanitarian’ field hospital for Gazan residents who want to destroy us? And yet, the 250,000 Jewish citizens of Ashdod don’t even have a proper medical facility to go to in case of a simple medical emergency or a terror attack? With all due respect, this is utterly absurd."
According to statistics, of the 28 medical emergency rooms in Israel, just three are located in the country’s entire southern region, with none located in Ashdod. And despite Israel’s world- renowned medical achievements, the country suffers from one of the lowest numbers of hospital accessibility (i.e. patient beds) in the Western world. This paradox has inexplicably placed the residents of Ashdod in mortal danger.
However, the residents of Ashdod are not without hope. A grassroots effort by the Refuah V’Yeshuah non-profit organization has spearheaded development of the Ashdod Emergency Medical Center, an independent facility that endeavors to provide state-of-the-art medical care to the local community. Rising amidst the sand dunes, the Ashdod Emergency Medical Center is being designed by medical experts in tandem with the staff at the respected Sheba Tel Hashomer Hospital, near Tel Aviv. Though the external physical structure is nearly complete and much of the internal electrical, telecom and computer systems are ready to come on-line, the state-of-the art facility is in the midst of trying to raise an additional $10 million dollars that will allow it to purchase the vital medical equipment needed to open its doors.
"It’s at once impressive and frustrating to see how far we’ve come in the two plus years since we’ve broken ground," said Orly Dakar, the executive dDirector of the Friends of the Ashdod Medical Center. "We have built a medical facility that will tend to the daily needs of everyone in the region. And in times of war, we have built some of the best reinforced, anti-chemical warfare emergency and trauma rooms in the entire country. All that’s missing is the funding to purchase the equipment. We can open the doors to the public within six months, if we can secure the $10 million dollars that we still need."
The nine storey facility, which comprises 180,000 sq. feet (17,000 sq. meters) will house:
- an emergency room, including medical, surgical, orthopedic, pediatric and women’s "ER" facilities, as well as a complete trauma room
- cardiology institute, heart treatment and physiotherapy rooms
- obstetrics/gynecology, pediatrics, mammography and pain clinics
- dialysis, gastroenterology and orthopedics departments
- X-ray, ultra-sound, CT and nuclear medical stations
According to statistics, fewer than 40% of those people who visit an emergency room need to be hospitalized. Community access to the Ashdod Emergency Medical Center would thus ease the burden on full-fledged hospital facilities in nearby Central Israel. Most importantly, the Ashdod Emergency Medical Center could prevent unnecessary human suffering.
Eli Perez and his sister Margalit, recently lost two family members in a short period of time, due to the lack of basic medical equipment in the Ashdod region. Margalit’s sister woke up in the middle of the night with a splitting headache and summoned for help. Precious time was lost between a visit to a local clinic that couldn’t help her and the additional ambulance drive to the hospital in Rehovot, where they did not have a proper CT (Cat-scan) available. By the time she was rushed to Sheba-Tel Hashomer Hospital, a massive brain hemorrhage had taken its inevitable toll. She passed away in a matter of hours. Mr. Perez’s elderly father, who had been in relatively good health, couldn’t be woken on Shabbat morning to go to shul. "A doctor who came to see him, told me to leave him alone, that he was just sleeping. But another doctor friend of mine told me to get him to a hospital immediately, because it was possible he had suffered a stroke,"
Mr. Perez recalled. "By the time we got him to a hospital a few hours later, we were told it was too late. Had he been taken to a local ER right away, we were told that there was a good chance he would have survived. Even after several months, my sister and I are devastated by this, because we, the citizens of Ashdod don’t have access to a proper emergency room that could save countless numbers of lives. We need the Ashdod Emergency Medical Center to open as soon as possible, so others should be spared from the double tragedy we experienced."