Hospital workers stroll underground in a hallway at Galilee Medical Heart, a group hospital in Nahariya, in northern Israel.
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Hospital workers stroll underground in a hallway at Galilee Medical Heart, a group hospital in Nahariya, in northern Israel.
Claire Harbage/NPR
NAHARIYA, Israel — If you go to the Galilee Medical Heart in northern Israel, you’ll be able to hardly let you know’re underground. There are nursing stations, hospital beds and a separate neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU.
There are acquainted hospital scenes: a father caressing the toes of his new child, relations crowded across the mattress of an ailing beloved one, and a nurse drawing blood.
The group hospital in Nahariya is simply 6 miles from the border with Lebanon — the place tensions and preventing between Israel and Lebanese militants are intensifying.
The NICU at Galilee Medical Heart was the primary a part of the hospital to maneuver underground.
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The NICU at Galilee Medical Heart was the primary a part of the hospital to maneuver underground.
Claire Harbage/NPR
“We’re underground with the sufferers as a result of we’re getting ready ourselves to proceed taking good care of our sufferers, even underneath hearth,” explains Dr. Masad Barhoum, the director of the hospital. He is carrying a protecting vest over his costume shirt.
It took only some hours to maneuver the primary sufferers underground on Oct. 7, when Hamas-backed militants crossed from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, killing greater than 1,400 individuals and taking on 240 hostages, in line with Israeli officers.
Within the month since, Israel has bombarded Gaza, run by Hamas, killing greater than 10,000 Palestinians and damaging overcrowded hospitals there, in line with Gaza’s Well being Ministry.
The conflict has additionally ignited what specialists are up to now calling a “restricted spillover” of battle between Israeli forces and militants in neighboring Lebanon.
In northern Israel, the alternate of rocket hearth and artillery with Iran-backed Hezbollah and different armed factions in Lebanon comes every day. In current days, civilians on either side of the border have died amid dozens of airstrikes. Simply exterior the hospital in Nahariya, it is common to listen to drones and air raid sirens.
“Nearly all of the hospitals in Israel are getting ready for the large conflict with Hezbollah,” Barhoum says, “however we, particularly, are getting ready this second for a few years.”
Dr. Masad Barhoum is the director of Galilee Medical Heart in Nahariya.
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Dr. Masad Barhoum is the director of Galilee Medical Heart in Nahariya.
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Galilee’s wartime protections had been utilized in Israel’s 2006 conflict with Lebanon. Throughout that battle, a missile from Lebanon hit the fourth ground of the hospital. Employees had already moved their medical care underground, so nobody was injured within the assault.
All throughout Israel, however particularly within the north, hospitals are shifting underground or into fortified areas, or are getting ready to take action.
Parking storage turned hospital
Within the northwestern metropolis of Haifa, Rambam Well being Care Campus, has transformed a three-floor underground parking storage right into a hospital.
Israel’s largest trauma hospital, within the northwestern metropolis of Haifa, has transformed a three-floor underground parking storage right into a hospital.
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Israel’s largest trauma hospital, within the northwestern metropolis of Haifa, has transformed a three-floor underground parking storage right into a hospital.
Claire Harbage/NPR
The place there was parking spots, there at the moment are hospital beds, oxygen hookups, screens and a respirator. Rambam, Israel’s largest trauma hospital, has 1,400 beds underground.
“I am not conversant in one other facility like this in the entire world,” says Dr. Netanel Horowitz, who’s a part of the staff establishing the garage-turned-hospital in Haifa. “If we’d like tomorrow to go down, it is prepared.”
Every day, Horowitz says, he and his staff are alert to elevated border motion that would drive them underground.
Dr. Netanel Horowitz, who’s a part of the staff establishing the underground hospital in Haifa, goes to the third stage of underground flooring.
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Dr. Netanel Horowitz, who’s a part of the staff establishing the underground hospital in Haifa, goes to the third stage of underground flooring.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, has stated he is able to escalate the conflict additional at any second, relying on the course of Israel’s offensive in Gaza and its conduct towards Lebanon. “All eventualities are open on our Lebanese southern entrance,” he stated on Friday in his first speech because the battle started.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had his personal threats for Hezbollah, saying an assault from Lebanon “will come at a value.”
A mannequin miles from the border
At Nahariya’s Galilee Medical Heart, the primary unit to go underground was the NICU, the place weak infants get medical care. It took employees a number of hours to maneuver all of the gear and sufferers down.
“I am not afraid myself,” says Dr. Vered Fleisher Sheffer, who runs the unit, “however the security is so necessary to our mother and father and our most weak infants.” When NPR visited late final month, there have been infants being handled who had been delivered as early as 24 weeks, their therapy simply as seamless as if there wasn’t a conflict.
It is a stark distinction from what’s occurring with the well being care system within the Gaza Strip, which was already struggling earlier than Israel launched its newest navy response to the Hamas assaults. Eighteen hospitals and many of the main care facilities have stopped functioning because of assaults or lack of gas since Oct. 7, in line with Gaza’s Well being Ministry.
A father visits his child who’s being handled for jaundice within the NICU at Galilee hospital in Nahariya.
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A father visits his child who’s being handled for jaundice within the NICU at Galilee hospital in Nahariya.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Galilee is not simply going underground for security. The hospital’s first ground is fortified to resist a missile assault, defending the trauma division, ambulance bay and different surgical rooms from an assault out of Lebanon.
Heavy metal doorways guard the opening to the primary ground trauma middle and emergency room. Close by there is a bathe prepared in case Lebanon makes use of chemical weapons.
For the previous couple of weeks, the hospital has been receiving Israeli troopers wounded from preventing in Gaza, in addition to greater than 200 northern residents who’ve been injured in rocket assaults from Lebanon.
Dr. Bahir Sirhan, who works within the Galilee hospital’s emergency division, says there is no want to attend for future escalation. “The menace is actual,” he says. “The conflict is already right here. It is right here.”
Dr. Bahir Sirhan works within the emergency division at Galilee.
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Dr. Bahir Sirhan works within the emergency division at Galilee.
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A number of weeks in the past, Sirhan was working when a name got here in that an ambulance was on its approach in with 4 individuals injured in a rocket assault close to the border. A number of the sufferers, it turned out, had been his relations.
“Now we have drills to obtain such trauma instances, however nobody ready me for receiving relations,” he says. “I went from being a health care provider to being a member of the family and it was a bit complicated. It took me a number of moments to chill down my nerves and begin after receiving them.”
A stairwell leads upward from an underground hallway at Galilee Medical Heart in Nahariya.
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A stairwell leads upward from an underground hallway at Galilee Medical Heart in Nahariya.
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He says when the sufferers acknowledged him, they referred to as his title, and his presence calmed them down. Their accidents weren’t vital they usually have since recovered. However the expertise nonetheless haunts him. “I do not want to deal with my household once more,” he says. “That is a nightmare.”
Getting the employees prepared for the migration underground
At Rambam Hospital in Haifa, the underground amenities sit largely empty, however prepared. Many parking spots have hospital beds already, different sections have numbers to suggest a affected person space with hookups, ready for the beds which can be at present in use upstairs to be rolled down. On a current go to, hospital leaders had been operating a drill to assist nurses and docs get used to working within the facility.
Although the hospital had beforehand used the underground storage through the COVID-19 pandemic, solely a set variety of employees had labored in that house, so for a lot of, the apply train was the primary time they’d been down there.
A staff of hospital workers runs by way of a drill to apply within the underground hospital in Haifa.
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A staff of hospital workers runs by way of a drill to apply within the underground hospital in Haifa.
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“I can not lie and say it isn’t a terrifying and horrifying scenario as a result of it’s,” says Alina Maister, an inside medication nurse who’s a part of the coaching train and describes the final month in Israel as “one lengthy day.”
“It is higher to know what to do, the right way to do it, and be ready for the worst so we are able to handle it in one of the best ways attainable,” she says.
Whereas touring the power, she says she exchanged questioning glances together with her fellow nurses. “It is arduous to think about how our jobs would look down right here,” she says. “The place is every part? The place will individuals be? What’s the plan?”
Lipaz Zira play acts as a affected person with a child in a drill within the underground hospital in Haifa.
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Lipaz Zira play acts as a affected person with a child in a drill within the underground hospital in Haifa.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Through the drill, dozens of employees members start to apply triage and therapy of pretend-patients performed by their coworkers and members of the Israeli navy. Challenges change into apparent: The acoustics make it tough to listen to the sufferers, and hospital sections — the ICU, the working rooms — are in new places, so the employees must apply rolling the beds in the suitable route.
However Maister says she’s assured they’re going to determine what to do in time. “We all know the right way to deal with most conditions. I feel it is one of many strengths of nurses.”
At Rambam, the pediatric dialysis is already totally purposeful within the storage. That part of parking spots is buzzing with the hum of nurses, youngsters taking part in video video games and a father listening to a pop track along with his daughter.
Israel’s largest trauma hospital, in Haifa, has transformed a three-floor underground parking storage right into a hospital.
Claire Harbage/NPR
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Claire Harbage/NPR
Israel’s largest trauma hospital, in Haifa, has transformed a three-floor underground parking storage right into a hospital.
Claire Harbage/NPR
Tal Romano’s 4-year-old son Hadar is getting dialysis therapy. “It makes me really feel extra comfy,” Romano says, sitting subsequent to his son. “It feels very protected down right here.”
Whereas Romano speaks to NPR, a nurse attracts a flower in pen on Hadar’s leg to make him snort. Romano says his solely critique of getting therapy underground is that Hadar misses the colourful kid-friendly decor of the upstairs unit.
“For the children, it is just a little bit tough, you understand, he would not see the surface world,” says Romano. “He would not get used to it so simply.”
Tal Romano sits along with his 4-year-old son, Hadar, who’s receiving dialysis within the underground hospital in Haifa. A nurse drew a flower on Hadar’s leg to make him snort.
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Tal Romano sits along with his 4-year-old son, Hadar, who’s receiving dialysis within the underground hospital in Haifa. A nurse drew a flower on Hadar’s leg to make him snort.
Claire Harbage/NPR