Moshe Leon, the Mayor of Jerusalem whose vaccination has reached the effective stage, expressed his interest in seeing the work of the staff in Hadassah Hospital from up close. The staff was at that time tremendously overloaded caring for more than 130 Corona patients, most of them serious and complex cases and some of them in critical condition, on mechanical ventilation.
The Mayor was escorted by the Deputy Director of the hospital, the Ward Director, the head nurse, together with Yisrael Yeret, Director of Ezer Mizion’s Jerusalem branch.
The mayor expressed his appreciation of the contribution to the care of corona patients being made by Ezer Mizion volunteers: “This is a very difficult period. In the brief time that I spent in the ward, I saw the destructiveness of the virus with my own eyes, and I admire every doctor, nurse, and Ezer Mizion volunteer who puts on the protective gear and goes in several times a day to care for so many patients. Seeing is believing! Bravo to Hadassah Hospital and to the Ezer Mizion volunteers. You are doing fantastic work. Everyone who can should come and volunteer!”
Ezer Mizion has trained a troop of corona alumni who spend three hour shifts in hot, uncomfortable PPE gear, happy to have the opportunity to be on the giving end. Some will bring hot soup or bottles of water. Some will make phone calls to family or feed patients. All will bring encouraging words so desperately needed in the overflowing wards.
So many requests normally graciously handled by hospital staff in a timely manner cannot even be ‘put on the list’ during these difficult times. And so an Ezer Mizion staff member was not too surprised to receive a call from Romania. “My father is a corona patient in a hospital in Israel and he needs a walker. The staff is understandably too busy to order it for him. Is there any way Ezer Mizion can get it?”
“I got to work on it right away but it took three hours of coordination with calls from Israel to Romania, Romania to Israel… back and forth…circuits down etc etc etc …until all loose ends were taken care of. A volunteer was found on site and the elderly father was presented with a walker. The tears of gratitude from both father and daughter made all the frustrations worthwhile. (How do you say ‘walker’ in Romanian?)”
