Emergency Service in Shomron

The Shomron Regional Council’s security department has begun building the new Emergency Center for the Shomron at the Gav HaHar Community Service Center. The center will serve the communities of Elon Moreh, Itamar, Har Bracha, Yitzhar, Kfar Tapuach and the surrounding hilltop communities for all of their emergency medical needs.

Emergency Team in Action. Picture courtesy of Shomron Liaison Office

These communities are isolated and distant from hospital emergency rooms located in Petach Tikva, Kfar Saba and Jerusalem. An average ambulance run from one of these locations to a hospital emergency room could take an hour and a half with no traffic congestion. This travel time consumes the “golden hour” needed to get a seriously injured patient to first treatment after an accident or terror attack. Residents of these communities do not have that luxury.

Head of the Shomron Regional Council’s ambulance service Aviel Mamalia says that this new service is, simply put, “a life saver.” He tells of many women from these communities who have given birth on the way to the hospital because of the distance and of children, hurt in playing accidents, who needed to be transported to hospitals in Petach Tikva for first level care.

The Emergency Center is already operating during evening hours with volunteer doctors who are surprised to see so many unexpected cases needing their attention.

The new center is a great upgrade to the emergency services that operate at the Gav HaHar center, which include ambulance, fire department, and social services.

This new Emergency Center for the Shomron is being built thanks to a generous donation by Mrs. Cherna Moskowitz, who realized that this center is a real need for the growing communities in the mountain top region. With the blessings of doubling the population in a very short time come the growing responsibilities of caring for emergency situations that occur anywhere – and even more so in the Shomron, which has also experienced more than its share of terror attacks.