Making Home Visits To Aid The Elderly In The Time of Corona
The COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc with people’s lives and unemployment in Israel has skyrocketed. Tens of thousands of at-risk Israelis are struggling to access even the most essential resources. United Hatzalah has stepped up to help coordinate and deliver food packages to elderly citizens, Holocaust survivors, and other affected populations. United Hatzalah has established the National Humanitarian Dispatch Center. Using United Hatzalah’s 1221 emergency helpline, a purpose-built secondary dispatch center and proprietary technology, operators locate the closest volunteers and alert them to the humanitarian emergency in their proximity. In cooperation with other agencies, there is a combined network of 30,000 volunteers to assist in delivering food, medications, and other necessary supplies.
United Hatzalah volunteer Orel Ben Kort, is a paramedic in the Rambam Medical Center. As such, he is currently working long hours treating COVID-19 patients in the hospital. Nevertheless, he also volunteers in United Hatzalah’s COVID-19 relief efforts. Orel provides an incredible volunteer service for homebound citizens with chronic conditions that require regular injections. It is crucial that these high-risk elderly individuals remain at home, yet they require these medications for their health. On his ambucycle, Orel makes a personal visit to these patients’ homes and administers the appropriate injection. “These are people with conditions ranging from kidney failure and metastatic cancer to osteoporosis and diabetes,” explained Orel. “I also check first if they need any medication or food packages and bring that along as well if necessary. It’s a mixture of medical and humanitarian care.” Orel’s wife Olga, a medical student, also volunteers as a humanitarian-aid volunteer, focusing on providing medical advice and translation for Russian speakers.
United Hatzalah volunteers across the country are continuing their work, responding to medical emergencies and participating in humanitarian relief efforts. In Bnei Brak, EMTs provided medical coverage at a local nursing home, after a majority of the staff were forced into isolation due to coronavirus exposure. In the southern city of Beer Sheba, United Hatzalah ambulances are bringing eye specialists to provide Avastin treatments (eye injections) to homebound at-risk elderly people. The patients, who suffer from degenerative eye disease, would otherwise suffer irreversible damage to their eyesight. They are brought into the ambulances to receive the treatment in a sterile environment, without having to go to the hospital and all the risks that it entails. Meanwhile, across the country, EMTs manning United Hatzalah ambulances are busy running shifts, shuttling residents without means of transport to regional coronavirus testing centers and transporting COVID-19 positive patients from overcrowded hospitals to specially designated ‘Corona Hotel’ recovery centers. As always with United Hatzalah, everything is done on a volunteer basis and all services are provided at no cost to the patients and their families.
