Ministers to review bill to prevent kids being left in cars

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation was set to review on Sunday a bill aimed at preventing incidents of children being left in cars by requiring kindergartens and daycare centers to notify parents if a child doesn’t show up at the start of the day.

Under the bill, staff at kindergartens and daycare centers would be required to contact the parents of any child who doesn’t arrive with an hour of the start of the day.

The bill is sponsored by Kulanu party MK Yifat Sasha-Biton and is intended to prevent at least some potentially fatal incidents in which children are left in cars in the summer heat.

As in recent years, the summer of 2016 has seen several incidents of parents forgetting their children in locked cars with five fatalities since May.

On Friday, a 16-month old girl was left in a closed car for two hours in Beitar Ilit, a settlement in the West Bank. Paramedics who were called to the parked car found the girl with neither a pulse nor respiratory activity as a result of a massive heatstroke, Army Radio reported. They attempted to lower her temperature while resuscitating her as they rushed her to the hospital, but she was pronounced dead on arrival at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.

Earlier this month a 4-year-old boy died in Rahat, a Bedouin city near Beersheba. His parents brought him to a local clinic in a state of clinical death, and he was pronounced dead at Soroka Hospital. Police are investigating whether his parents were guilty of neglect that led to him being left in a vehicle exposed to the sun for hours.

On July 8, an 8-month-old girl died after being left in a locked car in the southern Israeli city of Arad. The child’s grandmother was suspected to have left the child in the car for several hours.

The death came after in June two young brothers died in the Negev town of Hura and in May a baby died in Ashdod after being left in a car for three hours.

Terem emergency clinic figures show that in the last eight years there were 380 incidents of children being left in cars, the report said. Twenty of the incidents resulted in the deaths of children.