|
|
June 18, 2004
Israel's lifesaving MDs
Necessity made Hadassah hospital a world leader.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
The X-rays clearly showed the shattered remnants of a watch lodged
infinitesimally close to the patient's jugular. The slightest shift
of the watch, which had belonged to a suicide bomber, would threaten
the life of the patient, but Dr. Amal Khoury and his team of orthopedic
trauma surgeons delicately removed the metal shrapnel and the patient
survived.
Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem is one of the few places on earth
where such an operation could have been successfully performed.
"We unfortunately became probably the worldwide experts in
these kinds of treatments," said Khoury, who spoke to members
of Vancouver Hadassah-WIZO June 10.
Necessity is the mother of invention and, in addition to removing
watch fragments from victims of violence, Khoury's slide presentation
included the raft of material that has made its way from the packed
explosive vests of homicide bombers into the flesh of Israelis:
nails, nuts, bolts and screws, anything sharp and intrusive, to
cause the greatest human injury possible.
A decade ago, Hadassah Hospital's emergency room admitted about
40,000 patients a year. Last year, that number was 70,000. For this
reason, the hospital, with the assistance of overseas supporters
like Hadassah-WIZO, is undergoing renovations to exponentially expand
its emergency room.
The hospital is perhaps the world's most advanced facility for what
Khoury calls "mass casualty events": incidents like terror
attacks where large numbers of people require immediate and urgent
care.
When such an event occurs, Khoury explained, a dramatic action plan
goes into effect, with all non-urgent patients evacuated to make
room for the injured and all elective activities except surgeries-in-progress
stopped. The hospital's lobby can even be almost instantaneously
transformed into a makeshift emergency ward.
Khoury is an orthopedic trauma surgeon who is in Canada on a one-year
fellowship exchange known as the Sunnybrook-Hadassah Orthopedic
Trauma Exchange. He and his family currently reside in Toronto and
will return to Israel next summer. His presentation, which
included a short film on Hadassah-WIZO-supported facilities in Israel,
was to raise awareness of the medical advances being done there,
including world leadership in computer-assisted surgery.
Inherent in Hadassah Hospital's mandate is to serve patients without
discrimination on the basis of race or nationality.
"Both nations living there deserve a better existence and a
better life," said Khoury, who is an Arab Israeli.
In addition to the work being done on the ground in Israel, Khoury
said, the world benefits from Hadassah's research.
"Trauma has no boundaries nowadays and unfortunately every
big city and metropolitan [area] should be prepared and have pre-assigned
plans for disaster handling," he said. "We, unfortunately
again, have this experience."
The evening at the Bayshore hotel was Hadassah-WIZO's annual closing
event and a fund-raiser for its healthcare services campaign.
In addition to hearing Khoury's message, the event honored Sybil
Soskin, a longtime Hadassah-WIZO volunteer, community leader and
a benefactor of the Ted Soskin Centre for Communication and Cinema,
an Israeli facility named in honor of her late husband. Soskin's
daughters Susan Fine and Sandy Martin gave emotional testament to
their mother's role in their lives and the life of Canada's Jewish
community.
Canadian Hadassah-WIZO supports, among other projects, the Breast
Care Institute at Assaf Harofah, a state-of-the-art cancer facility.
Pat Johnson is a native Vancouverite, a journalist and
commentator.
^TOP
|
|
