|
July 30, 2010
World’s first responder
An Israeli aid team is the first to reach the Congo.
KARIN KLOOSTERMAN ISRAEL21C
Once again, Israel was first on the post-disaster scene, as its specialists in burn treatment and plastic surgery rushed to the aid of the Congolese following a recent tragic fire.
“Body beside body, beside body,” is how one reporter described the scene after a devastating fire engulfed a neighborhood in a Congo town a few weeks ago. An oil tanker overturned, igniting a nearby cinema packed with people watching the World Cup in Sange, a town of 50,000 about 40 miles from the regional capital city Bukavu. Within 48 hours, an Israeli team was in place to provide care to the victims.
Following the disastrous fire, which left about 235 people dead and hundreds with severe burns, many locals from Sange were so overwhelmed with shock that they couldn’t even cry, according to one account.
With very few burn facilities, the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, previously Zaire, relies on foreign aid workers to fill in the gaps. Upon learning about the fire, United Nations workers in Sange quickly called on Gila Garaway, a U.S.-born Israeli woman living in Congo, who works with Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
They knew about her work helping doctors in nearby Congo learn how to treat burns. For the past few years, she’s been busy setting up burn-treatment programs and facilities via the nongovernmental organization Moriah Africa that she founded in 2002, following her husband’s death in a plane crash. The two had previously worked in the Congo as consultants.
Garaway hastened to contact Israel’s Foreign Ministry for help. She also informed her associate, Ambassador Chaim Divon, who heads MASHAV, the Agency for International Development Cooperation and is also the deputy director general of the ministry. Divon immediately galvanized Israeli resources to aid the victims.
“We have been supporting, for quite some time, Gila’s fantastic work in the Congo in this field, where she is establishing a centre to be able to cope with people suffering from burns, as a result of the violent conflict and domestic burns,” he said.
Within 48 hours, he reported, five Israeli doctors and nurses were flown to the Congo, where they were joined by a sixth team member – Garaway.
In the Congo, there are very few facilities for handling burns, said Divon, who helps coordinate Israeli foreign aid around the world, most recently a shipment of blankets and tents to Moldova’s flood victims.
“For many years, Gila told me what she was doing and I told her that we’d be very happy to support her,” said Divon, adding that, in the recent past, MASHAV has supported Israeli doctors on a mission to the Congo, and the training of Congolese physicians in Israel, where they learned about advanced treatments and methodologies in burn-related plastic surgery.
Headed by Dr. Eyal Winkler from Tel Aviv’s Sheba Medical Centre, the team of Israelis stayed in the Congo for a week. Its members are now submitting their evaluations and MASHAV will decide on its next steps.
“We carried a half a ton of equipment to treat 30 injured in two locales,” said Winkler, deputy director of Sheba’s department of plastic and reconstructive surgery.
Garaway reported that not all the burn patients had been receiving anesthetics, and that the rural hospitals lacked electricity and running water. The victims’ pain was so severe that some individuals had begun to experience psychosis, she said.
In an e-mail update from the scene she wrote: “We are in Uvira, a town about 30 minutes from where the accident occurred. The team is in its third day of operations. Yes, they are making an impact.
“IsraAid is currently trying to find donors to help so that we can leave the dermatome [surgical instrument] here when the team leaves here on Monday. It is a very expensive piece of equipment, which was very kindly loaned by Sheba Medical Centre Tel Hashomer along with the team. It must be returned to Israel unless we can find a new replacement that will be on site in Tel Aviv before these guys leave.
“The situation here on the ground: There is no electricity at the moment, nor is there running water. There is miraculously an Internet connection, as long as my computer battery lasts. Electricity comes and goes here in the town. It’s hard to describe the Congo as a whole if you haven’t been here. Uvira is at the low end of things – a broken patch of pavement running through the town, but that’s it for roads. Minimal economy, and stability is fragile, to say the least.
“The Congolese people have tremendous internal strength and reserve to put up with living in the conditions here. This is very evident in the incredible level of pain people are enduring with almost no complaints. One of the ward buildings has been turned into a burn-wing with the 30 patients still alive. Between that building and the surgical theatre building (old and poorly equipped), there is a special treatment tent where the daily debridements and dressing changes are taking place. It is bloody, hot, sweaty, but working well. The team is wearing plastic bags over their shoes to protect [their shoes] from the fluids.
“There are a number of excellent doctors from Kinshasa that were sent here to the scene by the government just after the accident. They are working very well with the team. The Israelis have been very impressed by their sheer grit and willingness to dig in. That interface alone has been wonderful to see,” Garaway reported.
“There are another 17 burn victims in a small hospital north of here. Although the team has not been able to go up there (too much to do here), the Israeli ambassador to the Congo went up there the first day together with a journalist, the vice-governor and the Congolese ambassador to Burundi who has accompanied us back and forth across the border each day since the team arrived,” she continued.
“The team would like to assist those as well, but it’s not looking possible in their time frame and given the amount there still is to do here. This is another important reason for wanting to leave the dermatome behind – so that the Sange patients can also be treated.”
In the meantime, thanks to a joint United States-Israel initiative, the Congo is to have its first burn centre in Bukavu, a city of 250,000. Currently being developed, the three partners in the project comprise MASHAV, Moriah Africa and the Los Angeles human rights organization Jewish World Watch.
In a recent edition of an Israeli newspaper, it was reported that Congolese President Joseph Kabila had telephoned the Israeli delegation in the Congo to thank them for their help.
Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.
^TOP
|
