Anticipating Attacks, Israeli Hospitals Go Underground

Stand for Israel  |  August 16, 2024

We already reported on how The Fellowship is busy on the ground in Israel helping prepare hospitals by securing their infrastructure and equipping them with supplies should they face a direct attack by the enemies that surround them.

But do you know the efforts Israelis have made to hospital infrastructure to allow hospitals, like Fellowship-supported Rambam Hospital in Haifa near the Lebanon border in northern Israel, to function during war?

Our friends at Israel21c share how an Israeli hospital must transform during a direct attack and how this planning helps save countless lives:

It’s not a theoretical threat: Since October 7, myriad rockets have fallen close to northern and southern hospitals. Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon has taken three direct hits from Hamas missiles, and a Hezbollah attack severely damaged a northern rehab hospital in the Upper Galilee on August 10.

In case of an all-out war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, or additional attacks from Gaza, Yemen or Iran, hospitals throughout Israel are further fortifying aboveground units and preparing – or already providing – underground care facilities…

As the largest medical center in northern Israel and the fifth largest in Israel, Rambam regularly holds drills preparing its medical staff to transfer all patients calmly and quickly, within six to eight hours, once the underground hybrid hospital is ready.

“It’s not just a parking lot that you push hospital beds into,” says Ratner. 

“All the vacuum lines, all the oxygen lines, medical gases, computer data, electricity –it’s all embedded in the concrete walls, which makes this unique. We just have to take out the cars, clean up, and put in special panels that connect to the embedded lines and turn every parking space into an area where you can put a few hospital beds.”

The Fellowship’s support includes donating a fortified command center that they still use today in case of an emergency.