“I warn you, I am in an area where a lot of rockets can fall. We can cut at any time.” On the line, Liat, a 42-year-old emergency doctor. On the phone, his voice is distant, the connection cuts out, and for good reason: Liat has currently been in southern Israel for a week. It strengthens the Israeli healthcare service, overwhelmed after the Hamas attack on October 7, which left more than 1,400 dead on the Israeli side.
For three weeks, a few dozen international doctors have joined the ranks of Magen David Adom (MDA), the emergency service of the Jewish state, which has 30,000 volunteers in Israel. Since the Hamas attack, contingents of French doctors have arrived every week to volunteer their medical skills to conflict zones. Five French people arrived on Hebrew soil on October 14, and five others took off on October 22 for Tel Aviv.
For many of them, the departure to Israel was obvious after the attack by the terrorist organization. “We went through, like all those who go through tragedies, a sort of incomprehension. We didn’t believe what we heard and what we saw,” recalls Michel C., his voice trembling. The now retired emergency physician, who lives in the Paris region, remains in shock for a few hours, horrified by the images piling up on his television set. Before getting involved: you have to go help as quickly as possible.
The retiree is in full packing: he must fly this Sunday, October 22 to Tel Aviv, with four colleagues, to help. “We have to stay to keep them alive, and to do this, we have to help and participate,” he reports. Despite his age (70), the question of leaving “as soon as possible” for Israel “did not even arise”.
Same reaction for Liat. “The initial reason for my departure is contained in my job description,” she explains firmly. “I am an emergency doctor: my job is to save lives, and to do it quickly. I took off as soon as possible.” Like Michel C., Liat has been involved with the MDA for many years. With many of her colleagues, she carries out one-week internships in Israel twice a year to be trained in emergency medicine practiced in the Hebrew state, which has a very specific way of functioning. “In Israel, MDA relies on the effectiveness of ‘paramedics’ – these practitioners who work in ambulance services,” she explains. There, the reaction time is less than three minutes, and the “paramedics” arrive on site in less than ten, providing first aid directly to the victim.
Also read “We had not seen such images since the Nazi regime”: the atrocious testimony of forensic teams in Israel
This all-terrain efficiency was put to the test as soon as the first sirens sounded in Israel on October 7. Illen Klein, a Franco-Israeli who has lived in Israel for 28 years, is in the management of the MDA: he is responsible for welcoming the French caregivers who arrive slowly. At night, he still hears the incessant sound of telephone ringing at the MDA call center. “We quickly understood what horror was happening on the ground,” he recalls by telephone from central Israel. “We saw terrorists entering homes to kill women, children, babies.” If he explains that he is “used to conflicts”, this time is “different”, because “we know that we are sending teams, some of which will not return”.
Three weeks after the Hamas attack, the toll is heavy – ten Maguen rescuers fell under the bullets of the Islamist organization. “Some were shot in the kibbutzim, while providing first aid, others in their ambulances, while taking their patients to the hospital,” laments Illen.
In fact, continues Illen, “medical teams in southern Israel are trained to respond to 20 or 30 medical emergencies at the same time. There, we had 5,000, so we needed reinforcements.” This is where French doctors come into play. The latter are sent mainly to the south of the country, in the territorial strip which borders Gaza. “It’s very dangerous, of course,” admits Michel C. “But it’s here that we are needed the most.” The MDA also centralizes the collection and redistribution of blood donations in Israel: the service, which normally operates at 1,500 units of daily blood donations, has been at 7,000 units collected and distributed for two weeks, underlines Victor Wintz in Le Figaro. , general director of MDA France. Foreign caregivers, recruited mainly from among emergency doctors, therefore compensate for staffing gaps, due to the reorganization of emergency teams in the south of Israel, but also to the engagement of Israeli caregivers in the Israeli army. IDF.
“We are in a state of war,” recalls Liat. “The doctors become soldiers, so we provide guard duty, we strengthen the teams to take care of routine medicine.” And he added, smiling bitterly: “It’s not because people die under rockets that falls or heart attacks no longer happen. » In summary, French doctors juggle between disaster medicine and pre-hospital medicine. Daily life is busy, and the pace is tiring. Liat and his colleagues say they scrounge up a few hours of sleep here and there, moving from town to town to provide first aid as calls to the MDA arrive.
Also read: Israel: how the United States helped make the IDF one of the most powerful armies in the world
However, it emphasizes “unfailing solidarity”, which links the Israeli population to caregivers. Their welcome allows Liat to hold on in the face of often difficult interventions. “Faced with a killed child, it’s complicated…” she emphasizes. “But we try to eliminate the risk of post-traumatic shock by verbalizing with the teams. It helps us keep a cool head.” Teams of French doctors are present on site for periods of one week, renewable. “For the moment,” explains Illen Klein, “we have recruited a few dozen foreign doctors to test, but if the war becomes widespread, we will recruit emergency doctors with all our might.”
