Hospital workers stroll underground in a hallway at Galilee Medical Heart, a neighborhood hospital in Nahariya, in northern Israel.
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Hospital workers stroll underground in a hallway at Galilee Medical Heart, a neighborhood hospital in Nahariya, in northern Israel.
Claire Harbage/NPR
NAHARIYA, Israel — While you go to the Galilee Medical Heart in northern Israel, you possibly can hardly inform you’re underground. There are nursing stations, hospital beds and a separate neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU.
There are acquainted hospital scenes: a father caressing the ft of his new child, members of the family crowded across the mattress of an ailing cherished one, and a nurse drawing blood.
The neighborhood hospital in Nahariya is simply 6 miles from the border with Lebanon — the place tensions and preventing between Israel and Lebanese militants are intensifying.
The NICU at Galilee Medical Heart was the primary a part of the hospital to maneuver underground.
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The NICU at Galilee Medical Heart was the primary a part of the hospital to maneuver underground.
Claire Harbage/NPR
“We’re underground with the sufferers as a result of we’re making ready ourselves to proceed caring for our sufferers, even underneath fireplace,” explains Dr. Masad Barhoum, the director of the hospital. He is sporting a protecting vest over his costume shirt.
It took only some hours to maneuver the primary sufferers underground on Oct. 7, when Hamas-backed militants crossed from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, killing greater than 1,400 folks and taking on 240 hostages, in response to Israeli officers.
Within the month since, Israel has bombarded Gaza, run by Hamas, killing greater than 10,000 Palestinians and damaging overcrowded hospitals there, in response to Gaza’s Well being Ministry.
The warfare has additionally ignited what specialists are thus far calling a “restricted spillover” of battle between Israeli forces and militants in neighboring Lebanon.
In northern Israel, the trade of rocket fireplace and artillery with Iran-backed Hezbollah and different armed factions in Lebanon comes each day. In current days, civilians on each side of the border have died amid dozens of airstrikes. Simply exterior the hospital in Nahariya, it’s normal to listen to drones and air raid sirens.
“Nearly all of the hospitals in Israel are making ready for the massive warfare with Hezbollah,” Barhoum says, “however we, particularly, are making ready this second for a few years.”
Dr. Masad Barhoum is the director of Galilee Medical Heart in Nahariya.
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Dr. Masad Barhoum is the director of Galilee Medical Heart in Nahariya.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Galilee’s wartime protections have been utilized in Israel’s 2006 warfare with Lebanon. Throughout that battle, a missile from Lebanon hit the fourth flooring of the hospital. Workers had already moved their medical care underground, so nobody was injured within the assault.
All throughout Israel, however particularly within the north, hospitals are transferring underground or into fortified areas, or are making ready to take action.
Parking storage turned hospital
Within the northwestern metropolis of Haifa, Rambam Well being Care Campus, has transformed a three-floor underground parking storage right into a hospital.
Israel’s largest trauma hospital, within the northwestern metropolis of Haifa, has transformed a three-floor underground parking storage right into a hospital.
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Israel’s largest trauma hospital, within the northwestern metropolis of Haifa, has transformed a three-floor underground parking storage right into a hospital.
Claire Harbage/NPR
The place there was once parking spots, there are actually hospital beds, oxygen hookups, displays and a respirator. Rambam, Israel’s largest trauma hospital, has 1,400 beds underground.
“I am not acquainted with one other facility like this in the entire world,” says Dr. Netanel Horowitz, who’s a part of the crew organising the garage-turned-hospital in Haifa. “If we want tomorrow to go down, it is prepared.”
Every day, Horowitz says, he and his crew are alert to elevated border motion that would drive them underground.
Dr. Netanel Horowitz, who’s a part of the crew organising the underground hospital in Haifa, goes to the third stage of underground flooring.
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Dr. Netanel Horowitz, who’s a part of the crew organising the underground hospital in Haifa, goes to the third stage of underground flooring.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, has stated he is able to escalate the warfare additional at any second, relying on the course of Israel’s offensive in Gaza and its conduct towards Lebanon. “All situations are open on our Lebanese southern entrance,” he stated on Friday in his first speech for the reason that battle started.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had his personal threats for Hezbollah, saying an assault from Lebanon “will come at a worth.”
A mannequin miles from the border
At Nahariya’s Galilee Medical Heart, the primary unit to go underground was the NICU, the place weak infants get medical care. It took workers a number of hours to maneuver all of the gear and sufferers down.
“I am not afraid myself,” says Dr. Vered Fleisher Sheffer, who runs the unit, “however the security is so essential to our mother and father and our most weak infants.” When NPR visited late final month, there have been infants being handled who have been delivered as early as 24 weeks, their remedy simply as seamless as if there wasn’t a warfare.
It is a stark distinction from what’s taking place with the well being care system within the Gaza Strip, which was already struggling earlier than Israel launched its newest army response to the Hamas assaults. Eighteen hospitals and many of the major care facilities have stopped functioning as a consequence of assaults or lack of gasoline since Oct. 7, in response to Gaza’s Well being Ministry.
A father visits his child who’s being handled for jaundice within the NICU at Galilee hospital in Nahariya.
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A father visits his child who’s being handled for jaundice within the NICU at Galilee hospital in Nahariya.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Galilee is not simply going underground for security. The hospital’s first flooring is fortified to resist a missile assault, defending the trauma division, ambulance bay and different surgical rooms from an assault out of Lebanon.
Heavy metal doorways guard the opening to the primary flooring trauma middle and emergency room. Close by there is a bathe prepared in case Lebanon makes use of chemical weapons.
For the previous few weeks, the hospital has been receiving Israeli troopers wounded from preventing in Gaza, in addition to greater than 200 northern residents who’ve been injured in rocket assaults from Lebanon.
Dr. Bahir Sirhan, who works within the Galilee hospital’s emergency division, says there isn’t any want to attend for future escalation. “The menace is actual,” he says. “The warfare is already right here. It is right here.”
Dr. Bahir Sirhan works within the emergency division at Galilee.
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Dr. Bahir Sirhan works within the emergency division at Galilee.
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A number of weeks in the past, Sirhan was working when a name got here in that an ambulance was on its manner in with 4 folks injured in a rocket assault close to the border. A number of the sufferers, it turned out, have been his kin.
“We now have drills to obtain such trauma instances, however nobody ready me for receiving members of the family,” he says. “I went from being a health care provider to being a member of the family and it was a bit complicated. It took me a number of moments to chill down my nerves and begin after receiving them.”
A stairwell leads upward from an underground hallway at Galilee Medical Heart in Nahariya.
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A stairwell leads upward from an underground hallway at Galilee Medical Heart in Nahariya.
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He says when the sufferers acknowledged him, they referred to as his identify, and his presence calmed them down. Their accidents weren’t essential they usually have since recovered. However the expertise nonetheless haunts him. “I do not want to deal with my household once more,” he says. “That is a nightmare.”
Getting the workers prepared for the migration underground
At Rambam Hospital in Haifa, the underground amenities sit principally empty, however prepared. Many parking spots have hospital beds already, different sections have numbers to indicate a affected person space with hookups, ready for the beds which are presently in use upstairs to be rolled down. On a current go to, hospital leaders have been operating a drill to assist nurses and docs get used to working within the facility.
Although the hospital had beforehand used the underground storage in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, solely a set variety of workers had labored in that house, so for a lot of, the apply train was the primary time they’d been down there.
A crew of hospital workers runs via a drill to apply within the underground hospital in Haifa.
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A crew of hospital workers runs via a drill to apply within the underground hospital in Haifa.
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“I can not lie and say it isn’t a terrifying and scary state of affairs as a result of it’s,” says Alina Maister, an inside drugs nurse who’s a part of the coaching train and describes the final month in Israel as “one lengthy day.”
“It is higher to know what to do, how you can do it, and be ready for the worst so we are able to handle it in one of the simplest ways attainable,” she says.
Whereas touring the ability, she says she exchanged questioning glances along with her fellow nurses. “It is arduous to think about how our jobs would look down right here,” she says. “The place is all the things? The place will folks be? What’s the plan?”
Lipaz Zira play acts as a affected person with a child in a drill within the underground hospital in Haifa.
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Lipaz Zira play acts as a affected person with a child in a drill within the underground hospital in Haifa.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Through the drill, dozens of workers members start to apply triage and remedy of pretend-patients performed by their coworkers and members of the Israeli army. Challenges turn out to be apparent: The acoustics make it troublesome to listen to the sufferers, and hospital sections — the ICU, the working rooms — are in new places, so the workers have to apply rolling the beds in the appropriate route.
However Maister says she’s assured they’re going to determine what to do in time. “We all know how you can deal with most conditions. I feel it is one of many strengths of nurses.”
At Rambam, the pediatric dialysis is already totally practical within the storage. That part of parking spots is buzzing with the hum of nurses, kids enjoying video video games and a father listening to a pop tune together with his daughter.
Israel’s largest trauma hospital, in Haifa, has transformed a three-floor underground parking storage right into a hospital.
Claire Harbage/NPR
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Claire Harbage/NPR
Israel’s largest trauma hospital, in Haifa, has transformed a three-floor underground parking storage right into a hospital.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Tal Romano’s 4-year-old son Hadar is getting dialysis remedy. “It makes me really feel extra snug,” Romano says, sitting subsequent to his son. “It feels very protected down right here.”
Whereas Romano speaks to NPR, a nurse attracts a flower in pen on Hadar’s leg to make him chortle. Romano says his solely critique of getting remedy underground is that Hadar misses the colourful kid-friendly decor of the upstairs unit.
“For the children, it is somewhat bit troublesome, , he does not see the surface world,” says Romano. “He does not get used to it so simply.”
Tal Romano sits together with his 4-year-old son, Hadar, who’s receiving dialysis within the underground hospital in Haifa. A nurse drew a flower on Hadar’s leg to make him chortle.
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Tal Romano sits together with his 4-year-old son, Hadar, who’s receiving dialysis within the underground hospital in Haifa. A nurse drew a flower on Hadar’s leg to make him chortle.
Claire Harbage/NPR
