Israeli hospitals declare themselves prepared for mass casualty events
Since the start of war, hospitals have conducted drills, stockpiled supplies, and moved wards underground, readying themselves for worst-case scenarios, with MDA cooperation
Reporter at The Times of Israel
Across Israel, hospitals are on heightened alert, bracing for a war with Iran and Hezbollah that could see mass casualty events.
Health Minister Uriel Buso convened a series of medical readiness assessments with hospital directors and health maintenance organization executives last week following the double assassinations of Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh in Teheran and Hezbollah military head Fuad Shukr in Beirut.
Buso discussed emergency preparedness, including information on safe areas, emergency supplies, cyber defense, mental healthcare, and ways to immediately raise readiness levels.
He directed all personnel to check medical equipment inventory to guarantee “operational continuity,” adding that “the healthcare system has been operating in emergency mode since October 7.”
MDA
Magen David Adom (MDA) held a three-day drill in northern Israel last week that simulated a missile strike on a building populated by dozens of people.
The MDA reinforcement unit was mobilized along with regular MDA teams practicing a “blackout scenario” focusing on satellite resources. The drill simulated treatment for casualties, and the use of special technological and logistical tools, including dedicated vehicles.
Part of the drill involved MDA’s blood services, focusing on emergency blood donations in the event of infrastructure shortages.
MDA chief of staff Uri Shacham said that the organization would utilize its fleet of about 600 medicycles — medically equipped motorcycles and motor scooters — to deliver blood from MDA’s blood vault, which is protected against chemical, missile, and cyber attacks, to Israeli hospitals.
If roads are destroyed, Shacham said MDA has all-terrain vehicles, known as Unimogs, that can travel off-road to reach their destinations.
“The drill was successful, preparing us for a total communications blackout,” said Eli Bin, director general of MDA.
Central Israel hospitals
At medical centers throughout the country, there is a sense of increased readiness.
At Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, a spokesperson said that 350 hospital beds are ready in the recently expanded fortified underground complex.
The 5,000 square meter complex on two floors of an underground parking lot includes intensive care units, surgery departments, orthopedics, internal medicine departments, and a dialysis unit.
“The complex is ready for full operation at short notice,” said a hospital spokesperson.
The emergency department is fully fortified, including the trauma room and blood bank, with a total of about 100 treatment stations.
A spokesperson at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center said the hospital “is accustomed to providing immediate medical response in emergency events.”
The staff has undergone “training, drills, and of course, intensive actual work” since the beginning of the war and has provided medical care to over 1,000 people who have been wounded.
In the first months of the war, the hospital established two underground treatment complexes in Hadassah Ein Kerem and Hadassah Mount Scopus, to provide a medical treatment solution for hundreds of patients that would continue without interruption during an emergency or a threat to Jerusalem.
Like many other hospitals, Sheba Medical Center has an emergency backup generator to keep the hospital functioning, along with “people’s monitors and heart pacemakers.”
“We prepare and drill all the time, throughout the year,” said a Sheba hospital spokesperson. “We are on 24/7 alert but there’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
Sheba has seen “four or five soldiers at a time going into the trauma center and the emergency room since October 7,” the spokesperson said. “As the largest hospital in Israel, we are always ready for a mass casualty event.”
Rambam Medical Center
At Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, a spokesperson said that the hospital has not canceled vacations, surgeries, or clinic appointments.
Yet the underground floor at the hospital is ready with 1,200 beds. If necessary, 700 patients from the aboveground hospital can be moved to the underground hospital within 6 to 8 hours; there are another 250 beds in secure places in the hospital, making a total of 2,150 beds.
In April, the hospital conducted a drill of a mass casualty event from a missile hitting an apartment building. The drill was conducted in cooperation with the IDF Home Front Command and MDA emergency response services.
The two northernmost hospitals
Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war against the Hamas terror group there.
So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 25 civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 18 IDF soldiers and reservists.
In Nahariya, six miles from the Lebanese border, Galilee Medical Center director Prof. Masad Barhoum said that since October 7, his hospital has been “preparing for the Third Lebanon War.”
The almost daily attacks have given medical personnel at his hospital as well as Ziv Medical Center in Safed a grim, limited glimpse into what it might be like during a full-scale war.
During the 2006 Lebanon War, Hezbollah fired close to 4,000 rockets into Israel, resulting in the deaths of 49 Israeli civilians and 121 IDF soldiers; some Hezbollah rockets damaged Galilee Medical Center’s fourth-floor ophthalmology ward.
Within days of October 7, even before the Health Ministry and the IDF Homefront Command issued directives for the hospitals, the hospital staff moved babies in the neonatal intensive care unit down to the hospital’s fortified underground facility. Other units followed.
So far, the hospital has treated about 1,500 wounded, most of them soldiers.
In Safed, Ziv Medical Center director Prof. Salman Zarka said the facility has been combining care for residents of the north along with taking care of war casualties. Since October 7, the hospital has taken in more than 290 wounded civilians and soldiers. The hospital treated eight of the dozens of children wounded in the Hezbollah attack on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights.
Zarka said that the hospital has stockpiled food, medication, and oxygen to last for several days “in case we become a ‘separate island.’”
Soroka Medical Center
In the south, Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, the closest hospital to the border with Gaza, has treated more than 3,000 wounded soldiers and civilians since the war began on October 7.
“There hasn’t been any change in readiness,” said a hospital spokesperson. “We have been on full alert since the beginning of the war.”
