Last week, while medical staff at Hillel Yaf Hospital in Haidar were performing cardiac catheterizations in one of the hospital’s three secure operating rooms, a siren sounded signaling an impending Iranian ballistic missile attack.
The missile was fired, and the operation continued successfully. Afterwards, staff moved the patient to another building with a safe recovery area.
On Wednesday, an Iranian missile hit near the Hadra power station, which was just one kilometer down from the hospital. There was no damage to the Israel Electric Company’s infrastructure.
“We are trying to provide the best medical care without adequate security.” The hospital’s director general, Professor Miki Dudkiewicz, told The Times of Israel via video call ahead of the strike.
Since the conflict with both Iran and Hezbollah erupted, the hospital – which is located midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa and serves 650,000 people – has been forced to vacate the inpatient building. It transferred patients to other hospitals, which Dodkiewicz said, “we’re concerned, because what if a rocket hits an ambulance?”
The emergency department and pediatric emergency department now operate in a basement that is not suitable for full medical care.
“We have to maintain the ability to treat people, but lives are at stake,” Dudkevich said.
The situation in Hillel Yaf reflects the wartime crisis facing medical centers across the country.
With creativity and improvisation, hospitals and other facilities are turning underground parking lots, storage areas and unused spaces into shelters to protect their patients and staff during the ongoing war with Iran and Hezbollah, which began on February 28 with joint US and Israeli strikes on Iranian regime targets. To pick up the slack.
Official Israel is well aware of the extent of the shortage: in a report published in January, Comptroller of State Matanyahu Engelman found that 56% of inpatient beds and 41% of operating rooms in the country’s hospitals do not have standard protective infrastructure.
The situation is most serious in psychiatric hospitals, where approximately 75% of inpatient beds are unsafe. About 63% of beds in gynecological hospitals do not have standard protection.
The comptroller’s report also found that in medical centers near the borders in the north and south, 56% of catheterization and vascular imaging rooms are unsafe.
“Even sites designated as having a high level of protection, where hospitals currently operate, do not actually meet the required protection standards,” the comptroller wrote.
Engelman emphasized the importance of strengthening the protective infrastructure in all hospitals so that they can provide medical services during a long, large-scale war, which Israel now finds itself in.
He mentioned Iran’s missile attack on Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba last June during the Iran war, which injured 80 people and destroyed eight operating rooms along with six research laboratories.
“This should serve as a wake-up call for the government,” Engelman said. “This is a threat to national stability.”
Engelman estimated that a multi-year framework would cost about NIS 4.8 billion ($1.54 billion). However, last week the government voted to cut NIS 66.6 million ($21.4 million) from the Health Ministry’s budget, a move that drew criticism from health experts.
In response to a question from The Times of Israel, a spokesperson said that the Ministry of Health “is working to enable the best medical care while maintaining continuity of operations in normal times and in emergency situations, and maintaining hospitals and departments according to need and budgetary considerations.”
The Finance Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
‘It’s still not enough’
In Hillel Yaf, a conservatory hospital building that was originally expected to be completed in 2023 is still in the early stages of construction, Dudokiewicz said, estimating the cost of completion at around NIS 450 million ($145 million).
He said the Ministry of Health has committed NIS 100 million ($32 million) to the project.
“The ministry is extremely valuable in light of Hillel Yaf Hospital’s location, its distance from other hospitals, and its population size,” a hospital spokesman said.
“The ministry understands our need and wants to give more, but it’s still not enough,” Dudukiewicz said.
After Soroka was hit by an Iranian missile in June, the government said Beer Sheba Hospital would receive public and private funds totaling NIS 1 billion ($307,375,000), including a $100 million ($NIS 315 million) donation from Israeli-Canadian businessman Sloan Adams.
However, to complete the construction of the new safe buildings, Soroka also held a party in November at the Plaza Hotel in New York City to raise another $50 million (NIS 157 million).
Dukiewicz and other hospital directors also began fundraising campaigns to meet their urgent wartime needs.
A spokesman for Zafoon Medical Center in Tiberias said its current campaign focuses on life-saving equipment, advanced protection and shelter solutions, and strengthening “the resilience of our medical teams”.
The spokesman said construction and infrastructure development “has been advanced through a strong partnership between the Ministry of Health and humanitarian support.”
At Shire Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, a spokesman said the hospital is also collecting money to cover rising costs during the current crisis.
“Obviously it’s very expensive to run a hospital underground,” the spokesman said.
Information technology, Internet communications, and all patient data systems now operate underground, “which is a significant expense,” he said.
Fundraising for intensive care units
The Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa “began building an underground hospital in a parking lot after learning the lessons of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, when there was no protection,” a spokesman told The Times of Israel.
Construction of the facility began in 2010 and was completed in 2014.
“The special thing is that everything is already installed on the walls and ceilings,” the spokesman said. “All you have to do is take the cars out, clean them and put them in beds.”
Currently, 900 people are in secure wards underground and 200 above ground.
“We have 22 secure operating rooms, so we continue to operate at 80% capacity compared to normal days,” the spokesman said.
Yet the hospital has also reached out to donors to purchase equipment for the underground emergency hospital and intensive care medicine department.
“Hospitals are not designed to be underground,” Dr. Yuval Dadon, deputy director general of the Wolfson Medical Center, told The Times of Israel by phone. “We know when staff members and patients stay underground for too long, it’s not good for their health.”
Since the start of the war, Wolfson has worked to “transform the storage areas into highly equipped and efficient facilities,” Dadon said.
“Nobody expected us to be bombarded by so many missiles for so long,” Dadon said. “Right now, we are very creative in finding solutions to continue and provide excellent health to all our patients. This is a change in perspective.”
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