The Samy Ofer Fortified Hospital - An underground fortress of healing

...While the storm may indeed be once more gathering around the continuing miracle that Eretz Israel is for all mankind, one thing is for sure: in time the skies will clear overhead, Israelis will emerge battlescarred, but whole, and within the Samy Ofer Fortified Hospital they will have fully met their nation’s invitation to storied heroisms that others will long remember.

Qanta Ahmed..
Times of Israel..
27 June '14..

“A hospital is only a building until you hear the slate hooves of dreams galloping upon its roof. You listen then and know that here is no mere pile of stone and precisely cut timber but an inner space full of pain and relief. Such a place invites mankind to heroism.”

Richard Selzer, Taking the World in for Repairs, 1987

I am again in Haifa, here to explore Israel’s extraordinary Sammy Ofer Fortified Emergency Hospital at Rambam Medical Center- the world’s largest subterranean hospital. I had heard about it during my first visit to the Rambam Medical Center as part of my tour of The Technion’s medical campus last spring, but at the time it was still under construction and it would be almost a full year before I would get to visit it.

Rambam Medical Center is the referring center for twelve district hospitals, as well as the United Nations Forces stationed in the region, the Israeli Defense Forces of the Northern Front and the United States’ Sixth Fleet. It provides what’s known as quaternary level care — advanced levels of highly specialized medicine not widely available. Partly because of location and largely because of expertise, Rambam Medical Center is the largest and most experienced trauma receiving hospital in the whole of Israel. In a battleworn country intimately familiar with trauma, mastery in trauma is a hard-won and hotly contested accolade indeed. Rambam Medical Center’s abilities are measured the way medicine is always judged, by the stark mathematics of survivorship. More victims of trauma survive when treated here than anywhere else in the nation.

Last May, at Rambam Medical Center, I had entered the emergency room through triple sets of steel doors, which were used to seal off the Emergency Room from conventional warfare. This was the emergency room that had functioned full force despite the onslaught of Hezbollah missiles raining onto Haifa during the 2006 Israel Lebanon War.

“We could feel the missiles landing in the Mediterranean…our Emergency room would shake with their impact, but inside we kept treating the patients,” one person explained. I could almost imagine the impact against the hive encompassing acute trauma.

During the Israel Lebanon War, Haifa was under active fire for 34 days. More than sixty rockets struck within a half-mile radius of the hospital alone. The hospital received 792 casualties in that month of war, of whom 254 were soldiers. But life in Haifa, like the rest of Israel. doesn’t stop because of war. Rambam Medical Center still delivered 247 babies, handled 1587 surgeries, received 2000 admissions, dealt with 7000 emergency room visits and conducted 28000 outpatient appointments while managing the fallout of full on battle.

(Video) Israel, Resilience, and Victory for One Exceptional Officer

LOTL..
02 February '13..

During the Second Lebanon War, Officer Asael Lubotzky from the esteemed Golani Infantry Brigade, was admitted to Rambam Health Care Campus after being seriously wounded from a direct anti-tank missile at the site of what became known as the Battle of Bint Jbeil.

Now, almost 7 years later we pick-up the story of Asael Lubotzky, critically wounded by Hezbollah terrorists, as he dramatically transforms from victim to healer.


AishVideo Uploaded 06 February '13

Further reading: Victory for One Exceptional Officer - The Story of Asael Lubotzky

Purchase Asael Lubotzki's moving memoir that is written in Hebrew: http://www.ybook.co.il/%D7%9E%D7%9F_%...

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.

.

(Video) American Doctors Who Voted for Israel

LOTL..
08 November '12..









On November 6th, Election Day in the USA, a delegation of 20 American doctors came to Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, Northern Israel. The delegates are members of the American Physicians Fellowship for Medicine in Israel.


Published on Nov 7, 2012 by rambamhospital

Who We Are

The American Physicians Fellowship for Medicine in Israel (APF) fosters deeper understanding and commitment to the State of Israel through its many innovative and cooperative programs.

Shamah - World’s largest, most advanced underground hospital opens in Haifa

David Shamah..
The Times of Israel..
08 June '12..

The world’s largest and most advanced “fortified hospital” was unveiled this week at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. The 2,000 bed underground hospital is designed to keep patients and staff safe dozens of meters below ground even if missiles and rockets are falling above ground – in case the city ever faces the kind of attack it did during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. It is also designed to keep out chemical or biological weapons.

Missile attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas were the impetus behind the construction of the Sammy Ofer Northern Regional Underground Emergency Hospital at the campus of Rambam. Over the past decade, missile attacks have devastated both the far north and south of Israel. During the war in 2006, and during “hot” periods over the past decade in southern Israel when Hamas terrorists have dispatched dozens of weapons a day against targets in the Negev, both Rambam and Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon (where a similar, but smaller underground facility is under construction) were forced to move essential operations underground.

The new facility ensures that caregivers will have all the equipment and tools they need to continue caring for patients, and to deal with the influx of patients likely to need treatment in the event that the hospital goes “on line.”

Laying the Foundation for the World's Largest Hospital

Posted by IMRA

Haifa, 17.10.10
Rambam Medical Center
Public Affairs and Spokesman
David Ratner, Director

Seven thousand cubic meters of concrete were poured this week to form the base of the world's largest underground hospital. For 36 hours running, shifts of 70 workers and 80 cement mixers worked to lay the foundation of the emergency facility, which is designed to withstand conventional, chemical, and biological attacks.



The night of Saturday October 9, 2010 marked the start of a crucial phase of construction at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, Israel. More than 70 workers at the site began to pour roughly 7,000 cubic meters of concrete, which will form the concrete base of Rambam's protected emergency underground hospital - the largest facility of its type in the world - and underground parking lot. The pouring, which continued for more than 36 hours straight, involved 80 cement mixers that completed 1,000 rounds of mixing. To meet the deadline, four Haifa area concrete plants supplied materials around the clock.

According to Rambam Department of Engineering Director Aryeh Berkovitz, for two days following this effort, no concrete was poured in central to northern Israel. This is due to the fact that all related facilities, tools and personnel in the region were involved in the huge Rambam project.

RHCC Director Prof. Rafi Beyar commented, "This is a historic moment, not only for Rambam, but for the entire State of Israel. For a period of two years, we have coped with unexpected, difficult and weighty logistic problems regarding this construction. We overcame the obstacles, and with the help of our friends - donors and Ministry of Health officials - we are on the right path."

This project is slated for completion by May 2012, at which time the three-floor parking lot will provide much-needed parking space for some 1,500 Rambam workers and visitors. In times of emergency, the lot can be transformed at short notice into a 2,000-bed hospital that is secure from conventional, chemical and biological weapons.

Not only underground, the emergency hospital will also sit eight meters below sea level. Designed to be self-sufficient, the hospital will be able to generate its own power and can store enough oxygen, drinking water and medical supplies for up to three days. Due to its special location, the facility's construction has demanded unusual measures. Pumps have operated throughout construction - and will continue to the project's end - 24 hours a day, moving millions of cubic meters of brackish groundwater to the sea, enabling the workers to carry out their mission.

The next major step in the Rambam complex construction - the concrete pouring for the foundation of the Ruth Rappaport Children's Hospital - will begin on October 30, 2010. After that, work will begin on the new oncology and cardiology hospitals.

"Work is proceeding in a very ordered and professional manner," says Aryeh Berkovitz, who reports that all construction is proceeding according to plan. Due to the project's enormous scope and special nature, it has been making headlines. The recent cement pouring has received coverage on all major radio stations, TV channels and in the printed and online media throughout Israel.

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.