Life And Death: The Story Behind United Hatzalah Of Israel

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United Hatzalah of Israel, also referred to as Ichud Hatzalah, is the brainchild of Eli Beer, who started the organization at the tender age of 16.

I sat down with Mr. Beer recently to find out how this volunteer-based response unit is changing the way we all view emergency care.

A self-described poor student, Eli found his calling during the summer of 1988 when he signed up as an EMT in his neighborhood of Bayit V’egan. It distressed him, however, when his parents asked him about his emergency calls, “So did you save someone today?!” they asked eagerly. Due to the slowness of the ambulance response time, he was forced to answer sadly, “No, not this time.”

In those days, Yerushalayim had only 9 ambulances to service over 500,000 residents. The ambulances were dispatched from a single location near the entrance to the city. Depending on traffic conditions, it could take anywhere from 10-25 minutes for help to arrive. Considering that brain damage sets in after only 4 minutes of oxygen deprivation, this response time was simply unacceptable to Eli. What was the point of ambulances if they always arrived too late to help?

Frustrated with the futility and death surrounding him, Eli decided to take matters into his own hands. He began illegally “listening in” on the ambulance’s bandwidths with police scanners, hoping to be able to respond more quickly to distress calls that were nearby. He recruited a small band of 15 EMTs to help him and each day he would go to work in his father’s seforim store with the scanner on, intently listening for any nearby emergency calls. One day in 1989, his breakthrough came:

“Emergency at 37 Hapisgah Street. 70 year old man struck by a vehicle,” the scanner squawked.

His father’s seforim store was located at 50 Hapisgah Street so Eli quickly dashed to the scene, arriving in less than 25 seconds, and found an old man bleeding to death from a large gash on his neck. With no other equipment at hand, Eli immediately began applying strong pressure to the wound with his rolled up kippah. The bleeding slowly turned from a gush into a trickle, and then stopped altogether. The ambulance eventually arrived and transported the man safely to the local hospital.

For the first time ever, Eli had saved a life!

His elation knew no bounds. Like many of the more than 2,100 other United Hatzalah volunteers who have followed in Mr. Beer’s footsteps, he describes the moment as a “high.”

“Saving a life,” he says, “becomes an addiction of sorts. People have asked me about the burnout rates of our volunteers (the average volunteer answers 2-3 emergency calls per day, 7 days a week) and I tell them that it is surprisingly low. Once you have saved a life, you want to save more and more and more… ”

After that watershed moment, Eli obtained more “listening devices” and began forming volunteer EMT groups in other Jerusalem neighborhoods. Today, Hatzalah volunteers, with an average response time of fewer than 3 minutes, cover every single city in Israel! Compared to other developed countries, which average 10 minutes or more for EMTs to arrive and begin administering care, Hatzalah’s lightning fast response time is staggering. Eli has been invited to visit communities from Argentina to China, India to Brazil, and teach his lifesaving methods. Among other awards, he was recently given the prestigious Young Global Leader Award at the World Economic Forum, which pays tribute to leaders under the age of forty who have made dramatic, global contributions to society.