Emergency responders locate, evacuate missing people from Israel’s war zone with the help of Yad Sarah’s fall alert devices
Yad Sarah’s Medical Emergency Center is usually active in saving the lives of sick and elderly people who, through a service they subscribe to, are connected to the distress button that calls for help in an emergency, such as a person falling. Following the outbreak of hostilities in the South, however, it has become central to locating missing people that are fleeing from combat zones or requiring a variety of assistance services in a war situation. “If we normally check the age and health of the person first, now we start by locating an address and proximity to the line of fire,” says Ms. Esther Chester, Director of the Medical Emergency Center at Yad Sarah.
Yad Sarah’s Emergency Call Center joined the response to the war when it began receiving and responding to dire emergency calls from communities surrounding Gaza. The center received distress calls from members of the subscribers’ families. “We can’t find our 79-year-old mother! Help us!” The Emergency Center’s team in the South, which had been forced to evacuate to a protected area due to the missile threats, operated a large-scale aid effort in coordination with the police and the Homefront Command. The teams were in constant contact with family members to locate the missing and, in cases where they were found, transport them quickly and safely outside of the line of fire.
Later, in the face of heavy barrages of fire, the Medical Emergency Center operators worked to provide coordinated efforts with additional service departments of Yad Sarah to transport frightened and endangered disabled people away from combat zones as well as to equip people in their homes with respiratory medical equipment and mobility equipment for rapid evacuation and more.
Yad Sarah CEO, Moshe Cohen lauded the vital and comprehensive actions of call center operators and is calling on more volunteers to join the Emergency Call Center’s activities and help the hundreds of thousands of elderly and sick individuals who turn to the call center for quick assistance daily.
To join the hotline as well as to volunteer: *6444 from any phone or Whatsapp: https://did.li/U9lrl
