Magen David Adom, Israel’s primary emergency medical service provider, is preparing for Yom Kippur, its busiest day of the year. The EMS service will be called upon to treat an estimated 1,500 patients, as well as a marked increase in the number of calls for women in labor.

MDA stations throughout the country will be staffed with a large number of personnel to meet the demand.

MDA Director-General Eli Bin reports that due to the fact there is considerably less vehicular traffic on Yom Kippur, many pedestrians walk in the streets and this causes delays for ambulances responding to emergency calls. As such, ambulances are taken home by many on-call personnel, seeking to limit the distance of response times to calls.

Bin calls on the public to please permit emergency vehicles to travel without delays and to refrain from anything that might delay an emergency response.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)