TORONTO — Magen David Adom for Israel may be best known for its emergency vehicles, but the organization provides much more than that, said its president, Dr. Yehuda Skornick.
Head of surgery at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center and professor of surgery at Tel Aviv University, Skornick spoke recently at a luncheon meeting of Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel (CMDA), held at the offices of Blake, Cassels & Graydon.
He said that Magen David Adom provides more than 95 per cent of all blood and blood components to Israeli hospitals, trains more than 50,000 people a year in first-aid basics and more complex paramedical skills, helps other countries build their own emergency systems, and runs the MDA Israel Cord Bank, which collects donated umbilical cord blood following the birth of healthy children.
The cord bank – CMDA has donated $300,000 to this project – tests and types the stem cells, which have the ability to develop into any of the body’s tissue types and are currently used primarily to treat cancers and blood disorders.
“The advantage of cord blood is that it is safely collected, and it is endlessly available. We now perform about 200 transplants a year and have about 526,000 donors registered.”
After a potential donor gives birth, Skornick said, the blood is tested – usually about 35 per cent is suitable – and then is deeply frozen and documented in a computer.
Although the cord blood is now used only for cancer treatment, Skornick said that eventually it will be used for other purposes, such as the regeneration of damaged organs.
Since 2006, he said, a number of units have been transported to other countries including Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, Sweden, Italy and, just recently, to Belgium.
Israel also helps other countries who seek its advice in dealing with terrorist attacks, he said. “They need guidelines, continuous training, education and drills. We’ve undertaken training in many Jewish communities around the world, and we teach them how to behave in the event of an attack.”
In Israel, response time for the first ambulance to reach the scene of an attack is 3.9 minutes, he said, and the first evacuation takes about 10 minutes.
“The last urgent casualty is removed after about 25 minutes, and within one hour, the last casualty is evacuated. [We call it] scoop and run. We do the necessary things to get to the hospital, and every hospital has a MDA representative so they are always ready.”
The regional dispatch centre is always ready for the worst-case scenario, he said. “We’ve learned from our past. During the Yom Kippur War, hundreds of soldiers were injured in one minute, and we didn’t know what to do. We teach people now that the first ones to arrive on the scene should try to help the patients – even if they are not skilled paramedics.
“Lives are saved if things are done immediately. Bystanders can help out by carrying stretchers, [for example].”
When there are a lot of wounded patients, he said, paramedics have to give up treating those who have no chance. “It is difficult, but they have to treat the patients that have a chance first.”
