IDF in Equ.Guinea to Help after Deadly Blasts

 Video Of The Week-Albania Requests Israeli Help after Earthquake https://tinyurl.com/rn56s7p6

Israeli delegation made up primarily of medical personnel; African nation’s hospital system overrun after massive explosions on army base kill 105, injure hundreds

For the full Article go to JUDAH ARI GROSS 11 March 2021 

An Israeli medical delegation landed in Equatorial Guinea on Thursday morning to assist the African country after massive explosions on a military base killed over 100 people and injured hundreds, an Israeli general said.

On Sunday, a series of major blasts — apparently triggered accidentally by munitions — on the Nkoa Ntoma camp in the country’s economic hub Bata devastated buildings at the military compound and houses in surrounding districts.

At least 615 people were injured in the explosions and 105 were killed, according to local authorities.

On Tuesday, Israel announced that it would send a medical delegation to assist the country, whose hospitals were overwhelmed by the number of injuries. The blasts were apparently caused by a fire at a weapons depot, which set off the ordnance being stored there.

According to Maj. Gen. Itzik Turgeman, commander of the IDF Logistics and Technology Directorate, the Israeli team included 67 people, 50 of them from the IDF Medical Corps and seven from the IDF Home Front Command, which is in command of the delegation. The remaining 10 people were civilian medical workers sent by the Health Ministry.

The delegation, which touched down on Thursday morning after leaving late Wednesday night, will not perform search-and-rescue operations in Equatorial Guinea, but will instead focus on providing medical care to the wounded, Turgeman said. “Right now the goal is getting to hospitals as quickly as possible and start to work,” he said.

The IDF Chief Medical Officer, Brig. Gen. Dr. Alon Glasberg, said the medical personnel in the delegation were mostly surgeons and intensive care unit staff.

The Israeli decision to send a delegation came after Spain, Equatorial Guinea’s former colonial power, said an aid plane would leave Madrid on Wednesday with drugs and medical equipment. The United States embassy also said Washington is sending experts to help with damage assessment and reconstruction.

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has ruled the oil-rich country with an iron fist for 42 years, once again blamed the military for “negligence” in stocking ammunition so close to residential areas. He had previously spoken of stubble-burning by local farmers setting off the tragedy.

State television channel TVGE said more than 60 survivors had been found trapped under debris on Monday, including two children, aged three and four.

TVGE has shown images akin to a war zone, with rescue workers and civilians struggling to remove bodies from smoking ruins. The only Spanish-speaking country in sub-Saharan Africa, Equatorial Guinea is one of the most closed-off nations on the continent. Bata is home to 800,000 of the country’s 1.4 million people, most of whom live in poverty despite the country’s oil and gas wealth.

Adding to the difficulty in understanding the full scale of the tragedy, air and sea links have been shut off for weeks due to coronavirus restrictions. Only military and government aircraft have made the trip there since the explosions.

Israel routinely sends medical and search-and-rescue crews to countries struck by natural and man-made disasters. Last December, the IDF sent such a delegation to Honduras after two hurricanes devastated the Central America country.

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PROTECTING THE ELDERLY

VIDEO Of The Week - How Israel Cares For Its Elderly - https://tinyurl.com/y9789ueg

  

21-4-2020, Editorial from  JP

It is widely recognized that the elderly are most at risk from the novel coronavirus, hence it makes sense to take special efforts to protect them, both for their own sakes and for the sake of the general public.
 

The nightmare scenario has always been that hospitals would be overwhelmed with people requiring ventilators and intensive care treatment and, as happened in Italy and Spain, for example, doctors would be forced to choose which patients to treat, often resulting in the oldest being left to die.
 

Israel, partly because of its relatively young demographic composition, has so far managed to avoid this terrible predicament. But the country is at risk of missing the bigger picture. In many cases, the elderly – not all of them much older than 65 – are being placed in an intolerable situation.
 

Following the relatively large number of deaths among residents of nursing homes, a very strict lockdown has been put in place at most facilities, with soldiers guarding the gates to monitor who enters and leaves. While the reasons for these precautions are clear – including to the residents – the results can be devastating.
 

In many cases, families that have been the major support of parents and grandparents suffering from cognitive impairment can no longer see their loved ones. Some of these elderly residents do not understand why this is happening. Particularly distressing was the report of the plan to remove Alzheimer’s sufferers, many of them Holocaust survivors, from their facility in Rishon Lezion, to prepare it to be used as an isolation center for corona patients if necessary. One set of patients should not be sacrificed for the sake of another. That is a basic precept of the Hippocratic oath.
 

The report over the weekend that patients from nursing homes were incorrectly diagnosed as suffering from COVID-19 and hospitalized in special wards also points to an extremely worrying chain of events.
 

The elderly everywhere are suffering from isolation and its devastating consequences. Those who are used to seeing children and grandchildren are being distanced, and those without close families are more alone and lonely than ever. Using platforms such as Zoom is not necessarily a viable alternative. The over-70s are not a homogeneous group; some are comfortable using social media, others are not, and still more might be able to use such media if someone is available to teach them.
 

Locking residents of retirement homes in their buildings – and in some cases in their rooms – is not a reasonable solution, certainly not in the long term. People need social, physical and mental activities in some form, be it in a central hall, respecting the two-meter distance regulation and wearing masks, or using a central courtyard that can be seen from balconies.
 

Not so long ago, the entire Western world followed with interest and empathy the fates of those passengers locked into cabins on cruise ships. Now, an entire segment of the population – a particularly vulnerable sector that often is without a voice – is undergoing something similar, unable to leave the confines of their rooms, with meals being left outside the door and without human contact. This is hard enough for a two-week quarantine, but it is not acceptable for a sustained period.
 

There has been a heartwarming effort to provide food and supplies to the suddenly confined needy but the time has come to think of how to relieve the stress and anxiety and feeling of abandonment.
 

There needs to be broad testing within retirement homes to monitor the situation and prevent these facilities frome accidentally becoming petri dishes of disease.
 

Last year, KAN 11 broadcast a touching series called 80 Plus Four, which documented the mutual benefits when a retirement home hosted a kindergarten for a few weeks. Obviously, now is not the time to introduce even low-risk kindergarten kids into retirement homes, but the authorities should now be thinking of the morning after for the country’s oldest age group.
 

Elderly people need a reason to get up in the morning, and to know that they have a tomorrow.

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Save a Child's Heart (SACH)

Save a Child's Heart (SACH) is an Israeli-based international, non-profit organization.We are known worldwide for our commitment to saving lives by improving the quality of cardiac care for children from developing countries and creating centers of medical competence in these countries.

Save a Child’s Heart provides life-saving cardiac surgery and other lifesaving procedures at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, Israel. Our doctors and nurses also hold preoperative and follow up cardiology clinics in Israel and abroad on a weekly basis. Save a Child’s Heart offers a comprehensive training program within Israel for doctors and nurses from developing countries, and leads surgical and teaching missions to our partner countries. To date, we have saved the lives of 4,000 children from Africa, South America, Europe, Asia, and throughout the Middle East.

By mending hearts, regardless of race, religion, gender, nationality, or financial status, we contribute to a more peaceful and productive world; a happier, healthier world, and a better world for all children, and their families.

Since 1995, SACH has treated more than 4,000 children suffering from congenital and rheumatic heart disease, from infancy to 18 years of age. The annual number of children we treat has grown dramatically from 48 cases in 1996 to over 260 in 2015.

The children we help are treated at the Wolfson Medical Center and housed at the Legacy Heritage Children’s Home of Save a Child’s Heart, both located in Holon. They come from around the globe, from 50 countries where adequate medical care is simply unavailable.

Approximately 50% of the children are from the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Iraq and Morocco, more than 30% are from Africa, and the remainder are from Asia, Eastern Europe and the Americas.

Incredibly, in today’s modern age, at any given moment there are thousands of children suffering from heart disease around the world who require our assistance.

If you know a child who needs our help, please use this Guidance and Referral Form form to send us their information. 

Download a breakdown of children treated by Save a Child’s Heart according to country, June 2015.

Video of the week: Save a Child's Heart (SACH) -  http://tinyurl.com/hqty4lp  

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