World Gleans Emergency-Response Expertise from Israel’s Magen David Adom

Israel is lending its vast experience, teaching medical teams from around the world how to save lives at the scene of a terror attack.

Amid the rise in global terror attacks, countries around the world are turning to Magen David Adom (MDA)—Israel’s national emergency medical, disaster relief, ambulance and blood services organization—to learn from its method of shortening emergency-response times.

Chaim Rafalowski, MDA’s disaster management coordinator, recently presented the organization’s method of integrating Israeli volunteers into its emergency-response system at the first International Conference for Victims Assistance, held in Paris and sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Representatives from Germany, Belgium, Canada, Israel, the UK, the U.S. and other countries attended the Paris conference.

MDA provides medical equipment to trained volunteers who serve on standby basis and are summoned to nearby scenes of emergencies when needed. Anyone with basic medical training can become a volunteer MDA “life guardian” emergency responder. MDA’s command and control dispatches EMTs, paramedics and life guardians based on their proximity to any particular incident, reducing emergency-response times.

MDA has, unfortunately, accumulated vast experience in managing mass casualty incidents over the years, especially in response to Palestinian terror attacks.

The Israeli organization’s presentation at the January 9 Paris conference came a day after the deadly Palestinian truck-ramming terror attack in Jerusalem, an attack that mirrored recent truck-rammings carried out by the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group in Nice and Berlin.

In December, MDA hosted doctors, nurses, paramedics and EMTs from around the globe at a conference focusing on mass medical emergencies.

Participants from the US, Italy, the UK, India, and Canada attended seminars by some of Israel’s most experienced medical-emergency professionals. Participants also toured MDA stations and played an active role in a multi-casualty incident exercise simulating a bus explosion, implementing knowledge they had acquired throughout the seminar.

By: JNS.org and United with Israel Staff