On Wednesday evening Health Minister Yakov Litzman (UTJ) and Director of Magen David Adom (MDA) Eli Bin met with the heads of United Hatzalah including Founder Eli Beer, Director Ze’ev Kashash, CEO Moshe Teitelbaum and more than 50 heads of United Hatzalah branches from around Israel in Modi’in. The meeting, which was spearheaded by the Health Minister, was held in order to discuss how to establish better cooperation and smoother transitions of patients between the national immediate response organization United Hatzalah and the national ambulance service Magen David Adom.

According to the outlines of the draft agreement which the Ministry is forming, the two Emergency Response organizations will continue working together as separate and independent entities. Eli Beer emphasized that United Hatzalah fully supports the tremendous efforts put forth by the Minister to help smooth the process of saving lives in Israel and that United Hatzalah is fully committed to implementing the plans being created by the Ministry.

According to the new draft of the agreement, both organizations will receive access to all of the emergency calls that go out throughout the entire country. In the coming days teams from both organizations together with representatives from the Health Ministry will be hammering out the remaining details of the agreement and its application in the hopes that the increased cooperation between the two organizations will lead to greater success in their mutual goal of saving lives.

The two organizations have been working hand in hand to save lives for the past ten years since the founding of United Hatzalah shortly after the second Lebanon War. Due to the prolific use of ambucycles and their wide range of community volunteer medics, United Hatzalah often arrives in under three minutes at the scene of an emergency and begins working to stabilize and treat the patients and then hands them off to MDA ambulances once they arrive on the scene. The MDA ambulance teams continue treatment while transporting the patients to the hospital.

“Minister Litzman is guaranteeing the agreement between the two organizations which in turn will benefit all of the citizens across the country,” said United Hatzalah Founder Eli Beer.

“I’m so happy that this organization that started with 15 volunteers in Jerusalem in the late 1980’s has now grown into a national United Hatzalah organization which operates throughout Israel and has over 3,000 volunteers and is growing around the world as well. We are recognized as the national first response organization of Israel, and working together with the national ambulance service Magen David Adom is a great satisfaction for me personally. To see both organizations working together to save lives is simply gratifying.”

Beer added that he felt that each organization and the roles that they play are important in helping people receive the quickest and most professional medical care that they can. “Each one has an important role. United Hatzalah with our volunteers and ambucycles, and Magen David Adom with their expertise and preparedness. All are necessary and should be utilized to the fullest capacity in order to save the lives of people living in Israel.”

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