Project Spotlight: Fortifying Israel’s Hospitals Against Rocket Attacks

The Fellowship  |  March 22, 2023

The Fellowship has undertaken a five-year plan to fortify Israel’s hospitals and increase their capacity to deal with crises and attacks. In just a few weeks, Schneider Children’s Medical Center will enjoy a fully fortified pediatric dialysis unit thanks to the generosity of The Fellowship’s donors.

Schneider Hospital’s pediatric dialysis unit is one of the largest in Israel; children from all around the country travel there to receive much-needed treatments for end-stage kidney failure. But the hospital’s location means that these children and medical professionals only have 1 to 2 minutes to run to safety when code red sirens sound.

“A child receiving dialysis treatment is connected to a machine and cannot simply get up and run,” says Dr. Orly Haskin, a nephrologist and the Medical Director of the dialysis unit.

The children are attached to machines that take at least 3 minutes to disconnect from safely and without infection. And with about a dozen little ones receiving care at the same time, it would be impossible for the nurse to disconnect them all in time.

The head nurse Yaffa tells us about when a siren went off during the last military operation. “All I think about is the children and making sure that they are okay. I have my own family, but there is no time to worry about them or about myself.”

“We become like a family,” says, Yaffa, who cares about her patients like her own children.

One of the parents, Moshe, whose 18-year-old daughter has been receiving treatments in the unit for the past five years, tells us: “I will breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that soon, thanks to The Fellowship, the dialysis unit will be fortified.”