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Israel prepares to fight Ebola in West Africa

Even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced new measures on Oct. 12 to screen for Ebola cases at Israel’s points of entry, officials from the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Health had worked over the weekend to put in place an emergency response program to help combat the epidemic on the ground in West Africa.
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October 14, 2014

Even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced new measures on Oct. 12 to screen for Ebola cases at Israel’s points of entry, officials from the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Health had worked over the weekend to put in place an emergency response program to help combat the epidemic on the ground in West Africa. 

“After the meeting at the prime minister’s office we reached a decision to change the mode of our expected operation, and instead of sending three clinics to peripheral countries, which was our original program, we will deploy mobile field hospitals to Liberia and Sierra Leone,” Gil Haskel, director of MASHAV, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation, said on Oct. 10.

The virus has hit Liberia and Sierra Leone the hardest, with the World Health Organization counting more 3,000 Ebola fatalities since the start of the outbreak in March 2014. 

“We don’t have the finalized numbers, but we are planning the configuration of the hospitals and staff,” Haskel told the Journal. “This will be a joint effort between MASHAV, Israel’s agency for development and global cooperation, and IsraAID,” a nongovernmental organization known globally for its crisis support, as well as its sustained work with earthquake survivors in Haiti and Japan.

The Ebola effort is aimed at helping medical professionals quarantine and care for their patients. 

Multiple reports from the outbreak zone indicate panic-filled health care workers are entering communities, issuing directives and then fleeing the areas without following through with the required prevention and quarantine measures. 

“We are putting the main emphasis on isolation units and protection gear for the medical staff,” Haskel said. “It doesn’t help if the virus will affect the nurse treating the first patient, because, of course, from there it is downhill.” 

IsraAID already has sent an advance team to Sierra Leone, and two of its staff members were the only representatives from international health groups at an Oct. 11 emergency Ebola meeting convened by Sierra Leone’s first lady, Sia Nyama Koroma. 

Yotam Polizer and Irina Polak, IsraAID staff specializing in social welfare and trauma programs, outlined training programs aimed at trauma prevention for health care workers and the affected communities.

“This is not going to be a hit-and-run. We’re looking at doing this Ebola work for a substantial time period, and we’re likely to be there for the next two years,” said IsraAID founding director Shachar Zahavi, who has issued a call for volunteer doctors, nurses and paramedics to set up the field clinics with supplies provided by Israel’s Foreign Ministry. 

“We will start with service providers to help reduce their stress, and then we will go with them into the communities and help them engage the community with a consistent message around Ebola prevention and treatment,” Zahavi said.

Health professionals serving in front-line medical teams are required to be in peak physical condition, as the conditions in which they work are extreme; while wearing their protective suits, they can lose up to a liter and a half of water per hour.  

The Israeli medical volunteers in the front lines of Ebola treatment will be integrated into teams already on the ground that were deployed earlier this month by the World Health Organization.  

“Ebola is a threat to global security, and we need to be in the front lines and demonstrate that Israelis and Jews care about the world. We can have a real impact on this situation,” said Zahavi, who added that he’s been in extensive consultations with North American Jewish leaders on ways to make the fight against this epidemic a genuine Israel-Diaspora partnership. 

IsraAID has been selected to lead the psychosocial aspect of the operation in this multinational effort, with the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders and the International Red Cross allocating the tasks in coordination with the governments in West Africa. 

“A colleague in Cameroon told me that Israel is a magical country, that we can do anything,” said Dr. Roee Singer, deputy director of the Division of Epidemiology at the Ministry of Health in Jerusalem. 

Singer was part of a team invited last month by the Cameroon government to train hospital and emergency service workers in Yaoundé who are anxious to prevent the incursion of Ebola into their country. 

“Of course we can’t solve all of their problems, but Israelis are treated with great esteem in places like Cameroon, where we’ve been involved for many years in health, agricultural development and security assistance,” Singer said.

“We ran seminars with doctors from the leading hospitals in the capital city, the army, police, firefighters and paramedics and airport workers. Our mission was to explain how personal protection works and how to then organize a protected space to treat Ebola patients,” said Singer, who when interviewed late in the day on Oct. 11 was working on crafting the Israeli border disease control measures. 

“I have to tell you that you can see the results of the training at the airport,” Nadav Cohen, Israeli Ambassador in Yaoundé, said in an interview Oct. 11. “They are checking the temperatures of arriving passengers and educating people with a visible public information campaign.”

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