In a powerful earthquake in Israel, each region in danger such as the northern Kinneret could have injured [and dead] numbered in each from a few thousand to close to 25,000, according to experts speaking at the Knesset Health Committee on Monday.
The patients in Israel are at full occupancy even on a daily basis. Hospitals such as Ziv Medical Center in Safed, Poriya in Tiberias, the English and French Hospitals in Nazareth and Yoseftal in Eilat, among others, could be damaged significantly in a way that prevents them from receiving any casualties at all, not to mention giving treatment to patients already in the hospital.
“In such a scenario, the State of Israel – which has sent many teams over the years to save survivors of earthquakes and other catastrophes – will also have to accept help from foreign medical teams,” said Rafael Golani, director of the emergency division at the Health Ministry. “We will also need to know how to receive aid, how to manage it and direct it to where it is needed.”
What is the Knesset health committee's purpose?
The health committee chaired by Shas MK Uriel Bosso discussed the health system’s assessments of a powerful earthquake in Israel. At the beginning of the discussion, the chairman of the committee referred to the severe earthquake that happened last week, praised and thanked the aid delegations that went to Turkey for their important work and said: “The Israeli health system must be prepared for a similar scenario here as well, since according to the calculations, the likelihood of such a case in Israel is almost certain.”
Medical centers and other health institutions are essential infrastructure and they need to continue to function even after an earthquake, said Bosso, both to continue providing care to the existing hospitalized patients and to take in the injured from the event itself.
“The State Comptroller's report from 2018 showed, unfortunately, that despite the government’s decisions and budgeting, no real change has yet been made in the preparation. We gathered here to hear what has progressed since then and what can be done to continue promoting and prepare for such a case in the best possible way.”
The public health funds have over 2,200 community clinics around the country, and even among them, there are very large gaps in terms of readiness. Four months ago, we established a large committee headed by Shaare Zedek Medical Center director-general Prof. Ofer Merin that included representatives of the Health Ministry, the Israel Police, Fire and Rescue, Magen David Adom (MDA) and the Defense Ministry’s National Emergency Authority. Anyone connected to the topic and relevant. We held over 20 discussions in many subcommittees.
Their report was presented to Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman Tov, and at his request, the mapping of the needs and plans for the preparation will be speeded up. As soon as we start receiving the budgets, we will advance the preparation according to the mapping and the priorities.
Bosso welcomed the establishment of the committee. “I'm glad that the ministry took notice and started to act; things need to be promoted immediately. We will ask to appoint a committee member on our behalf who will assist and report regularly to the Health Committee on the progress.”
“In the State Comptroller’s report, the 10 cities at very high risk in the event of an earthquake were specified, and not a single Arab settlement was mentioned there, although next to each such city or towns there are also Arab settlements. The audit must not be blind to the Arab society. earthquake, more than 100 seismic stations were set up, not even one here in the Arab settlements.”
Tahal MK Ahmed Tibi
Uri Goldstein, Health Ministry senior vice president and head of planning said that “there is a lack of equipment, such as generators, medical gas accumulators, mobile supply lines and more, but they can be provided immediately and at a relatively cheap price. The largest and most expensive layer is the strengthening of the structures. Many of the health institutions in the country were built before 1981 and do not meet the current standards for earthquake resistance. Over time, we renew buildings and build new ones, but the gap is still very large; this will cost hundreds of millions of shekels."
"We have a plan, but we don’t have the budget to do everything. If it is possible to promote and speed up the receipt of the budgets, we will be able to complete what we started at Ziv and the Rambam Healthcare Campus. Otherwise, it may take years; sometimes if you start strengthening the infrastructure but don't finish it, you make the situation worse.”
Tahal Party MK Ahmed Tibi declared that there are large community clinics that need to be strengthened, but this is not being done. “In the State Comptroller’s report, the 10 cities at very high risk in the event of an earthquake were specified, and not a single Arab settlement was mentioned there, although next to each such city or towns there are also Arab settlements. The audit must not be blind to the Arab society. earthquake, more than 100 seismic stations were set up, not even one here in the Arab settlements.”
Brigadier-General Itzik Bar, the deputy head of the National Security Council, countered that “the 120 seismic stations are located on a map of a regional analysis of the Syrian-African Rift where the strongest earthquakes are due to be felt and not according to locality. This provides an equal and uniform answer for everyone in terms of alerts.
"Bar added that there are already many budgets in preparation today, but the funds usually do not arrive on time and are not specifically defined for this purpose, so when there are budgetary challenges, this is the first thing whose funds are shifted elsewhere. If the budgets are not specifically allocated and there is no follow-up and reporting every year, the country will not progress and we will find ourselves in trouble. For every shekel we invest today, we will save 10 shekels when an earthquake occurs.”
Gil Moskovitz, deputy director of MDA operations, said that there is a program that includes 14 primary medical-treatment points that was approved in 2015 and implemented in 2018. It worked well in Eilat and in the north, but no one found the ongoing budget for the program. Without these, we won’t be able to provide a proper response to the tens of thousands of victims. And in the event of a powerful earthquake, a gap in blood donations is also expected; it is not certain that we will be able to meet the supply. There is work on locating countries in Europe that would be able to help with blood donations in such an eventuality.”
Haim Weingarten, head of the operations department at ZAKA added that “in Turkey, there are thousands of corpses lying in hospitals in a state of decay, and there is no one to deal with them. Apparently it’s going to a mass burial. This is a severe sanitary disaster, and we need to prepare for such a scenario – who is responsible for identifying the dead, who handles the burial matters.”Bar commented that “the State of Israel will do everything to avoid mass burials, and this requires immediate identification capabilities. Israel today has a database of [only] about four million fingerprints.