Israel's health care not quite back to normal

Hospital services in northern Israel were trying to return to normal as the BMJ went to press, after the disruption of the war. The home front command ordered hospitals to return to their normal routine; however, the alert level was stepped down only from high to moderate—not quite business as usual.

Northern hospitals, close to the border with Lebanon, treated 1463 soldiers during the war, and more than 40 soldiers are still in hospital there. Many of the soldiers initially treated in the north have moved to hospitals elsewhere or are in rehabilitation.

The reduced alert level allowed medical facilities such as Nahariya Hospital to evacuate patients who had been in underground units during the war. Now, except for the ophthalmology unit, which took a direct hit and has yet to be repaired, all wards have returned to full activity in their usual locations.

Physicians who specialise in trauma, forced to sleep in the hospital throughout the war, have returned to normal schedules. Numerous stretchers and cots, which flanked the emergency room entrance ready for a catastrophic event, have been folded and returned to storage.

Two days after the ceasefire began, Oscar Ambon, the director of Ziv Hospital in Safed, called a meeting to thank staff for their dedicated work during the war. Hospital employees cared for about 1600 wounded patients while their own children stayed in shelters because of the threat of Katyusha missile fire. Many members of their families abandoned the city, and some of those who stayed behind were wounded. The homes of several employees were destroyed, and missiles fell around the hospital and inside hospital grounds.

“This is not a normal situation,” Dr Ambon said this week. “As a physician, you expect not to get emotionally involved in your work, but involvement with wounded patients here was really intimate. You are in the war as well. Now, with the ceasefire, we are working under less pressure.”

Yossi Koren, a family doctor who directed community medicine emergency headquarters in Qiryat Shemona during the war, also feels that this is a cautious, tense return to normality.