Page 13 - Jewish News_January-2021

FEDERATION NEWS January 2021 13A

United Hatzalah founder to speak at Community Lecture

By Gayle Guynup
li Beer, founder of United together in order to save lives. In its well,” Beer explained. “The success emergency transpiring near their loca-
Hatzalah, an emergency re- 25 years, the organization has grown is a result of the goal that I had way tion, we avoid the issues that are inher-
Esponse organization based in to more than 5,000 volunteer medical back when of putting a fully trained ent with ambulances being dispatched
Israel, will be the guest speaker at responders treating more than 300,000 first responder with all the emergency from a central building and having to
The Jewish Federation of Sarasota- people per year. All services are pro- medical equipment they need to save fight traffic en-route to the emergency,”
Manatee’s annual Community Lec- vided free of charge to all citizens a life on every street, on every block, he said.
ture, a virtual event planned for Tues- regardless of race or religion. in every high-rise building. By utiliz- For someone who has spent his en-
day, February 23 at 7:00 p.m. The “In the beginning, we found our ing a wide network of volunteers, a fast tire career saving other people’s lives,
Federation is proud to have helped volunteers mainly by word of mouth. means of transportation, and advanced it was an odd turn of events when Beer
fund United Hatzalah. People involved told other people, and technology to alert them to a medical continued on next page
It was on June 2, 1978, that Beer those who loved the idea joined. Now
witnessed a bus bombing in Israel and that we are a well-known entity, people
was struck by the chaos that ensued and often find us. We sometimes put ads in
the lack of emergency rescue resourc- papers or on the internet to let people
es. It was this experience that inspired know that a training course is happen-
him to volunteer on an ambulance at ing, and people who want to do so sign
the age of 15 while attending school up,” Beer said. “Our volunteers are all
fully trained and licensed by Israel’s
Health Ministry, and our training is ac-
credited by the American Heart Asso-
ciation as well as the NREMT program
in the United States. All of our volun-
teers are at least EMTs. We also have
volunteer paramedics and even doctors
who volunteer with the organization.”
“United Hatzalah is an innovative
emergency medical organization. We
work together in the field with Israel’s
ambulance service, the police depart-
ment and the fire department, as well as
the IDF and Israel’s search and rescue
units. The organization is recognized
as an official rescue organization by
Eli Beer the Ministry of Internal Security, and
and working in his family’s book and an official medical emergency service
real estate business. At age 17, Beer by the Health Ministry. We have co-
began creating a system that would im- operative programs in which we send
prove those emergency response times. volunteers to work in the emergency
“When I began responding with rooms of more than a dozen hospitals
my 15 friends to the emergency calls in different cities in order to ease the APA_20_JNF5x5_MECH.indd 1 8/13/20 1:04 PM
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in our neighborhood, I just hoped to be burden of patient intake and care from
able to rescue the people that I could. hospitals that are often swamped with
With each step that I took, I saw the a high-occupancy level,” Beer added.
opportunity to make this idea blossom United Hatzalah has been at the
into an organization. I can’t say when forefront of medical innovation. It was
the exact moment was that I knew it the first EMS to introduce the Ambucy-
would be a national and international cle, a motorcycle equipped with all of
organization, but when I realized it was the medical equipment found in an am-
possible, I knew it was something I had bulance, aside from a stretcher. This al-
to do. No one, and I mean no one any- lowed first responders to reach patients
where in the world, should die waiting in an average of three minutes across
for help to arrive if it can be avoided,” Israel, eight to 15 minutes ahead of the
Beer said. ambulance. In 2008, United Hatzalah
Beer began to work with Hatzalah launched Israel’s first GPS-based dis-
Jerusalem in 1992, and in 2006 he patch system, which was able to dis-
changed the name of the organization patch the five closest EMS responders
to United Hatzalah to represent the within three seconds of the emergency.
partnership of Jewish, Muslim, Druze “It’s not just in Jerusalem, but
and Christian volunteers all working in many other metropolitan areas as

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