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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: August 8, 2006 |
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In an underground complex with walls of bare concrete and a ceiling crisscrossed by yellow and blue pipes, a patient just back from heart surgery lay immobile on a bed.
Rambam Hospital, in the northern Israel city of Haifa, had just moved many of its patients into the basement, and workers stood around the man on ladders, hooking up a new electricity line in the ceiling to power the equipment monitoring his vital signs.
As northern Israel nears the end of a month under Hezbollah bombardment, hospitals in the war zone are working around the clock and under fire to protect their patients from harm.
Though hundreds of rockets have hit Haifa and its suburbs, Rambam Hospital had functioned almost normally until Sunday, when three Haifa residents were killed in an intense barrage.
That's when the hospital decided to clear out the basement, which had been used to store medical equipment, and move a quarter of its 500 patients -- with their respirators, oxygen tanks and IV drips -- underground.
Rafael Beyar, the doctor in charge of the move, said it had taken the hospital this long to make the decision because a brief lull in rocket strikes on the city had led staff to believe "there would be no more attacks on Haifa."
After Sunday's barrage, he said, "we didn't have a choice."
The patients are lined up in rows, with few curtains to provide privacy, and toilets are located far from the beds.
"There is no order, no room numbers," complained Viki Levi, a nurse in the oncology department. "I don't even have a chair to sit on."
Shoshana Berechit, a 58-year-old patient in the neurology ward, said she understood why the move had been necessary. "Id rather be here. At least its safe," she said. "When I heard the explosions last night it was so strong that I thought the building was falling on us."
The hospital in the coastal town of Nahariya, less than an hour up the road and just five miles south of the Lebanon border, has been functioning underground since the outbreak of the war nearly a month ago.
In the bustling bomb shelter, paper signs taped to the walls -- Urology, Geriatrics, Neurology -- mark the various wards.
Unlike Haifa, this city was not taken by surprise, having suffered years of rockets from Lebanon in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Its hospital had rooms ready in bomb shelters and had drilled its 2,000 staffers in emergency procedures.
The green ridge that marks the border with Lebanon is clearly visible from a blown-out window in the ophthalmology ward, on the hospitals top floor.
One room here is ravaged: a bed bent out of shape, the floor covered in rubble, the blackened fur of burnt insulation ripped from the ceiling, the walls perforated by ball bearings.
The destruction extends into the corridor. A Hezbollah rocket fired from beyond the ridge to the north crashed through the window on July 28, two weeks after the ward had been moved downstairs. No one was here except for Max, the wards goldfish, who survived unharmed and now occupies a place of honor at the nurses station in the bomb shelter.
Uri Rehany, the head of the department, said he had seen 20 dead and wounded so far from the Hezbollah rocket attacks, most of them hit by the ball bearings packed into the rockets warheads. "They simply want to kill as many of us as possible," said Rehany, stepping over the rubble in his ward.
The wards move underground has not affected Rehanys work. After brothers Tiran and Aryeh Tamam were killed in a rocket attack on Acre on Aug. 3, their family donated their corneas. Rehany transplanted them into the eyes of four people, helping restore their vision.
One man from the northern city of Maalot had his house hit and damaged by a rocket while he was here undergoing receiving the transplant, he said. "Weave become used to this mix of happiness with tragedy," said Rehany.
While hospitals here are functioning, Israelis cooped up in bomb shelters across the north are having difficulty getting access to routine medical care.
The army's Home Front Command has tried to fill that hole, running 40 medical teams that it dispatches all over the north.
In one bomb shelter in Carmiel, three army medics -- women in their 20s called up for reserve duty -- were checking in on residents. "We see a lot of kids who are too frightened to leave the shelter to see a doctor," said Noga Nativ, 26, in green army fatigues and a flak jacket.
A few hours before, Natives team had showed up in a shelter occupied by elderly Russian immigrants who clamored to have their blood pressure measured. "Part of our job is just to show up and reassure people," she said.
Anyone deemed to be in need of emergency medical care is taken to the hospital in Nahariya.
Ilana Caspi, head nurse in Nahariyas pediatric ward, has treated hundreds of traumatized children. One 7-year-old girl, was brought in paralyzed from the waist down, she said, and it took doctors some time to discover that this was a trauma symptom.
Psychiatric care helped the girl walk again. Hospital staff are doing their best to take care of patients, she said, but the doctors and nurses themselves are going through the same trials.
"We all brave the rockets coming to work, and many of us have had our houses hit," said Caspi. "Were all traumatized." |
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