Twilight Zone / A doctor without borders

By Gideon Levy
Last Update: 25/05/2006 23:04

This is a story about a resident of the Shoafat refugee camp who holds a blue Israeli ID card and has been a Bezeq employee for the past 20 years. He suffered a heart attack and waited more than an hour and a half from the moment he lost consciousness at home until he was brought to the emergency room of Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus, a five-minute drive from his home. The refugee camp, with a population of 40,000, does not have a single ambulance. This is also a story about a Magen David Adom (MDA) team that decided to act with courage and dedication, in defiance of procedure, in an attempt to save the man's life.

What happened during the critical period, from the time the patient fainted at his home until he was declared dead at the hospital? Two MDA ambulances, first an ordinary ambulance and later an intensive care unit as well, arrived within minutes after being called, at the checkpoint that places the Shoafat refugee camp under siege. About another hour went by until the Israel Defense Forces escort arrived. Without such an escort, the ambulance is not permitted to enter this refugee camp, which is a Jerusalem suburb for all intents and purposes.

The intensive care team, headed by Dr. Aviv Tuttnauer, together with paramedic Ihab Elian, did not agree to wait, but decided to exercise their own judgment. After several minutes they entered the camp with their equipment in a private car, contrary to procedure, without an escort and without the ambulance, to try to resuscitate the patient, who was hovering between life and death in the Clalit HMO clinic where he had been taken. They didn't work "by the book," but by the Hippocratic Oath.

Could the patient, Omar Abu Kamel, 42 and a father of seven, who died in the end, have been saved if there had been an intensive care ambulance station in the camp - as there is in almost every kibbutz and in all the settlements? No one can give a definite answer to that question.

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