Director General of Shaare Zedek Medical Center Jerusalem Professor Ofer Merin is currently serving as the Commander of the IDF Field Hospital in Turkey. Together with a team of doctors and nurses they are providing much needed medical relief to victims of the devastating earthquake.
Professor Merin spoke with Israel’s Reshet Bet Radio today about the ongoing challenges they are facing:
“On this mission we decided to revive a local hospital which had been abandoned and we are beginning to see the local medical teams returning to work. Some of them had been directly injured by the quake, while others have lost their homes and they needed this time to be able to recover before coming back to the hospital.”
Prof. Merin, for whom it is the sixth such mission with the IDF in the wake of a natural disaster, described how alongside the work to treat the wounded, a major objective of the mission is to support the local medical infrastructure to return to normalcy as quickly as possible.
He described that all the people they have been blessed to help, both local Turkish victims as well as refugees from Syria who live in the affected region, have welcomed the Israeli teams and expressed their deep appreciation for their support at this critical time.
The full interview (in HEBREW) can be heard here.