This Rosh Hashanah we would like to talk to you about
SAVINGS AND INVESTMENTS
Training is our investment and the return is more lives saved.
It really is that simple..
Investing in saving more lives.
4,000
Volunteers are trained each year to become Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT)
450+
Paramedics will be trained in the next 12 months
227 hours
Each EMT course is over 18-24 months
£2.25m
Invested globally per annum on training
Adi's Story
Testimonial 1
Adi
Age: 19, Training location: Netanya
Start date: 1.9.2023, End date: 1.12.2024
The most important things I have learned during training so far:
- Self discipline – I was able to set limits and times for myself to be able to reach the goals I set for myself.
- Learning methods – I was able to understand which learning methods are more suitable for me and which are less suitable, a feature that will help me later in my academic studies and in general.
- Knowledge – The course was full of new things that I learned, both theoretical and practical material.
Gefen's Story
Testimonial 2
Gefen
Age: 20, Training location: Netanya
Start date: 1.9.2023, End date: 1.12.2024
The most important things I have learned during training so far:
- Professionalism – Learning and providing treatment correctly, performing the first aid procedures in the most accurate and adaptable way possible.
- Humanity -When we reach a patient, it’s often the most frightening and difficult situation they have experienced in their lives. We must be gentle, sensitive, empathetic and attentive, and the patient will feel safer and therefore trust us more.
- Investigation – In order to be professional and worthy of providing care, I must study and research, memorize and learn from everything possible.
Maayan's Story
Testimonial 3
Maayan
Age: 18, Training location: Netanya
Start date: 1.9.2023, End date; 1.12.2024
The most important things I have learned during training so far:
- Team work – Whether it be during studying on the paramedic training course, during emergency exercises or working in the field.
- Knowledge – The course teaches a wide variety of different topics.
- Adjustment to change – Since the course started we underwent major changes in life. For example, moving out of home to live with people we don’t know, being exposed to a new system/regimen, working with doctors and nurses and learning different paramedic work and techniques.
INVESTING IN LIFESAVERS
As Israel’s only national medical emergency and blood service, Magen David Adom is constantly investing in the future. From taking teenagers off Israel’s streets and turning them into life-saving teams of EMTs (Emergency Medical Technicians) and paramedics to building stations and a blood centre kitted out with the very best state-of-the-art equipment, Magen David Adom is making sure Israel is ready for whatever the future holds.
Read Ayala's Story HereSAVING LIVES IN THE FUTURE
The necessary level of preparedness changed after October 7th. Now, MDA needs to train even more people and purchase more of the equipment required to do so. By the end of 2024, MDA would have trained 4,000 volunteer EMTs and close to 500 paramedics. The cost to make this happen is shared between Magen David Adom UK and its global partners.
Read Moshe's Story Here
On the 7th of October, Ayala Mazor arrived at Soroka Hospital to look for her best friend, Yonatan Beit Halevi, who had been shot seven times. On this day she vowed to herself to learn how to save lives. This month (June) she finished a paramedic course and started fulfilling her promise.
In the last month, 16 new medics were trained at the MDA Haifa station. At the closing ceremony, the course instructors, emergency medicine medic Anan Salama, emergency medicine medic Noa Tzofar, and senior medic Asil Ebrahim presented Ayala Mazor with her certificate. She is one of the participants who carries an exciting story that brought her to this very moment.
Ayala Mazor (22) from Kibbutz Snir, and Yonatan Beit Halevi (20) from Kibbutz Dan, who served in Nahal's 50th Battalion, are childhood friends who grew up like siblings in Northern Israel. On the morning of October 7th, when Ayala learned that Yonatan had been shot seven times by the terrorists on the battlefield, she immediately went to the Soroka hospital. In the hospital, Ayala was exposed to many injured people. She searched for Yonatan for eight hours. During that time she saw terrible sights and was left feeling defeated that she couldn't help those wounded. That day, she swore to herself that she would learn how to save lives.
During the following months, as intensity built in the North and Ayala was evacuated from her home, she became more determined than ever before to learn how to save lives; so, that the day she returns home, she will know how to provide medical care to those around her.
About eight months after she made that promise, Ayala is able to get on an ambulance, she knows how to save lives and she is able to fulfil her oath. Yonatan, who underwent many surgeries and has begun a long rehabilitation process, is there to support her on this new journey.
Ayala Mazor, MDA medic says: "Yonatan and I have known each other since we were seven years old and we haven't been apart since. Since the seventh of October, I feel an even stronger connection to Yonatan and his family. On this fateful day, I was with a colleague and his twin sister, searching for Yonatan. Looking amongst all those wounded is something that touched me very much. I told her, 'Amit, when all this is over and we have found Yonatan, I'm going to learn how to treat people like this.' The moment we found Yonatan,alive, was so meaningful to me. With the intensification of the North and the evacuation from my house, my desire to learn how to save lives has only grown, in an attempt to try to prevent the events that I witnessed on the seventh of October. Thanks to the amazing course, I learned so much and I feel like this is just the beginning."
Yonatan Beit Halevi says: "Me and Ayala have been friends since first grade. Our mothers are best friends so we grew up together like brother and sister. On the seventh of October, when I got injured and I called my mother, the first person she called was Ayala's mother and they all went to look for me. Ayala was exposed to some difficult scenes until I arrived at the hospital and then she also saw that I was injured. I think that the situation she was in led her to help during this war. I will be accompanying her during my rehabilitation. I am very proud of her, especially because of the reasons that brought her to choose this path".
Friday morning, when he was one year old - Moshe's parents woke up to a gruesome sight: they found him not breathing, lying in bed, completely blue. They rushed him to the MDA station closest to their home, in Hazor HaGalilit, while performing CPR on him. When they arrived at the station, Ronen, a young MDA medic, rushed to them. He did not hesitate for a moment and started performing life-saving procedures, providing respiratory assistance, and within minutes, Moshe was breathing again.
With the outbreak of the Coronavirus, Moshe lost his job as an event photographer. He saw an ad for a medic course that opened at the station near his home and for him, it was a sign. Moshe successfully completed the course and began volunteering as a Coronavirus tester and ambulance medic at the Hazor HaGalilit station. About two weeks later, by chance he met Ronen, the MDA paramedic who saved his life. Ronen recognized him immediately and after he told him what happened, 24 years ago, Moshe was moved to tears. Today, Moshe works as an emergency medicine medic and a guide who teaches others how to save lives.
Moshe Biton, an emergency medicine medic at MDA, said: "The desire to volunteer at MDA was always there, but it came to fruition at the height of the Coronavirus. I read that a medic course was expected to open and from there things unfolded very quickly. During one of the shifts, when I first began volunteering, I saw Ronen, we looked at each other but I didn’t know him. He asked if I knew who he was and, of course, I answered no, but then he told me that he saved my life when I was just one-year-old. When I heard his side of the story for the first time, it just gave me chills. You meet the person who saved your life and suddenly you’re working with him 24 years later.”
MDA paramedic Ronen Kadosh: "I remember the event as if it were yesterday. I started shift on a fairly normal Friday, when suddenly Moshe's father ran into the station. I immediately started respiratory support and within a few minutes his skin colour returned to normal and he really came back to life. Since we met, I’ve been in contact with Moshe and I see him almost every day. Every time his parents see me they immediately shout - 'This is the man who saved our child, this is our redeeming angel'. To this day they haven’t forgotten me.”