If we ever doubted for a moment that Israel was surrounded by entities intent on its destruction, Turkish President Erdogan gave us good reason to think otherwise, with his recent threat to attack Israel from the West!
With clear and present evidence of malevolent intent from Hezbollah to the north, the Houthis to the south and Iran to the East, it is imperative that Israel be fully prepared for all contingencies.
A critical element of national resilience is the infrastructure needed to manage the inevitable number of casualties – many of them extremely serious – requiring life-saving surgery followed by long-term acute rehabilitation. Currently, Israel’s rehabilitation infrastructure is woefully under-resourced.
It is crucial to understand the recovery journey of the severely wounded.
Extracted from the battlefield, the wounded are -rushed to hospitals around the country for emergency operations. Having survived life-threatening wounds, they are released, not to their homes, but to a limited number of facilities geared to provide acute rehabilitation. The overwhelming majority of these acute rehabilitation centres are along Israel’s coast.
Of the current 810 acute rehabilitation beds in Israel, there are only 70 in Jerusalem, all at the still-to-be-completed Gandel Rehabilitation Center at Hadassah’s Mount Scopus campus. This is HALF the number planned and needed to serve the 1.3 million residents of Jerusalem and the surrounding area. It is the Mission of Hadassah Australia to raise the funds to provide for the remaining 70 acute beds at Gandel.
We must remember that acute rehabilitation is the critical phase of recovery. Only when the patient is deemed capable of independent living can they return home.
There is no time to wait. We must commit now to completing the inpatient facilities at the Gandel Rehabilitation Centre – for the benefit of Jerusalem, and Israel.
Ron Finkel AM
President
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