How an Israeli Hospital Took in Syrians and Became the World Leader in Treating War Wounds

'There’s nobody to help us but God and Israel' is a familiar refrain at the hospital near the Lebanese border. But the patients are eager to return home

Raji, 23, was heading to visit a friend in western Syria when a sniper’s bullet hit him in the face. The young man was given a bewildering choice: Go to a hospital in Jordan − or one in Israel. He knew the answer on the spot.
“I had heard a lot about the good treatment and care at hospitals in Israel, and there were bad stories about what happens in Jordan,” he told Haaretz from his room at Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. “I heard they amputate there for every little thing.”
He was received in Israel by Prof. Samer Srouji, mouth and jaw chief at Western Galilee. “I never saw a patient in such condition,” Srouji says. “Raji had lost his upper jaw, cheekbones on both sides of his face and his right eye. It was an unbearable sight – you saw no face.”

The mission to save Raji’s face began the day he arrived and has lasted a year-and-a-half. By now he speaks Hebrew, has gotten used to the hospital food and is highly involved in his treatment.
Not all wounded Syrians are asked if they want to come to Israel, or choose to come if they’re asked. The first ones, who weren’t asked, were terrified when they discovered where they were, says the hospital’s director, Dr. Masad Barhoum. “It would take them a day or two to calm down and realize they wouldn’t be harmed,” he says. “Now many ask to come to Israel.”

The Nahariya hospital is 10 kilometers from the Lebanese border, and it’s the second-biggest medical center in Israel’s north. Inaugurated in 1956, it has 722 beds, and from 2013, the year Israel began to take in Syrian wounded, it became a world leader in treating war wounds.

In the last four years it has treated 1,600 Syrians − 70 percent of the Syrian wounded who have entered Israel. Their average stay is 23 days.
After Russia joined the war in September 2015, the pace of incoming patients doubled and the type of wounds became much worse, Barhoum says.

The medical staff at Nahariya don’t care about the patient’s country of origin. “Seeing a child’s face, it’s inconceivable how one people can do such things to another people in the same country,” says Smadar Okampo, head nurse in pediatric surgery.
“These children have no childhood. The adolescents, 14, 15, are sometimes fighters – I can’t know if one’s an innocent civilian or a fighter with ISIS or the Nusra Front, or a soldier for [Syrian President Bashar] Assad. In any case, we treat everyone.”
“I don’t care who’s pitted against who,” adds Dr. Eyal Sela, head of the ear, nose and throat department. What he cares about, he says, is that no hospitals are left over there, and hardly any doctors.
A child’s world in Syria
One patient he can’t forget is a 15-year-old. A grenade went off in his right hand; he lost his right arm while the entire side of his torso was burned. Yet all he wanted was to return to Syria.


http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/syria/.premium-1.787053

photo made in Israeli controlled Golan Heights, Israeli military medics assist wounded Syrians.
An operating room at Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya
Wounded Syrians at Western Galilee Hospital, Nahariya
Dr. Eyal Sela

Emotional ties are created. And upon their arrival, wounded people from Syria cease to be the enemy. “Their stories make us cry,” Barhoum says.
Human ties, humanitarian help and security considerations are only part of the story. The hospital admits that these horribly complicated cases are a huge opportunity for it to gain experience. All trauma victims will benefit.
“I’m preparing the hospital for the third Lebanon war, which I believe will come,” Barhoum adds.

Prof. Samer Srouji.

Raji is housed in a relatively isolated ward where most of the Syrian patients lie. The ward has been secured 24/7 ever since Druze civilians attacked an ambulance carrying wounded Syrians in June 2015, thinking they belonged to the Nusra Front.
Children make up about a fifth of the Syrian patients in Israel. “I won’t forget the girl of three who arrived without parents and cried for three days straight, shrieking ‘Mama, Mama.’ Finally the mother of another girl simply adopted her,” Barhoum says.

Dr. Masad Barhoum

Children arrive with missing limbs and shattered faces, and many are severely neglected and carry lice. The first order of the day is cleanup, Okampo says. Many arrive without parents. Some arrive unconscious and don’t realize where they are when they wake up.
“They don’t understand the language, we look different, they’re in terrible pain – it’s a shock,” Okampo says.
They’re just as shocked that the Israeli staff can speak Arabic. Okampo took a course in the language at the hospital. “Language is the first thing that builds trust,” she says. “It’s hard to speak with a child through a third party.”

Smadar Okampo, head nurse in pediatric surgery