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Secondary Ambulance Transfers During the Mass-Casualty Terrorist Attack in Israel on October 7, 2023

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2024

Evan Avraham Alpert ,
Jacob Assaf ,
Ahmad Nama ,
Ruchama Pliner Open the ORCID record for Ruchama Pliner [Opens in a new window]  and
Eli Jaffe
Evan Avraham Alpert*
Affiliation:
Department of Emergency Medicine, Hadassah Medical Center- Ein Kerem, Jerusalem, Israel Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Jacob Assaf
Affiliation:
Department of Emergency Medicine, Hadassah Medical Center- Ein Kerem, Jerusalem, Israel Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Ahmad Nama
Affiliation:
Department of Emergency Medicine, Hadassah Medical Center- Ein Kerem, Jerusalem, Israel Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Ruchama Pliner
Affiliation:
Department of Emergency Medicine, Hadassah Medical Center- Ein Kerem, Jerusalem, Israel
Eli Jaffe
Affiliation:
Community Division, Magen David Adom, Or-Yehuda, Israel Department of Emergency Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel Ramat Gan Academic College, Ramat Gan, Israel
*
Correspondence: Evan Avraham Alpert, MD Department of Emergency Medicine Hadassah Medical Center- Ein Kerem Kalman Mann Street, Jerusalem E-mail: avraham.alpert@mail.huji.ac.il
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Abstract

On October 7, 2023, Israel experienced the worst terror attack in its history – 1,200 people were killed, 239 people were taken hostage, and 1,455 people were wounded. This mass-casualty event (MCE) was more specifically a mega terrorist attack. Due to the overwhelming number of victims who arrived at the two closest hospitals, it became necessary to implement secondary transfers to centers in other areas of the country. Historically, secondary transfer has been implemented in MCEs but usually for the transfer of critical patients from a Level 2 or Level 3 Trauma Center to a Level 1 Center. Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s National Emergency Pre-Hospital Medical Organization, is designated by the Health Ministry as the incident command at any MCE. On October 7, in addition to the primary transport of victims by ambulance to hospitals throughout Israel, they secondarily transported patients from the two closest hospitals – the Soroka Medical Center (SMC; Level 1 Trauma Center) in Beersheba and the Barzilai Medical Center (BMC; Level 2 Trauma Center) in Ashkelon. Secondary transport began five hours after the event started and continued for approximately 12 hours. During this time, the terrorist infiltration was still on-going. Soroka received 650 victims and secondarily transferred 26, including five in Advanced Life Support (ALS) ambulances. Barzilai received 372 and secondarily transferred 38. These coordinated secondary transfers helped relieve the overwhelmed primary hospitals and are an essential component of any MCE strategy.

Keywords

disastersEmergency Medical ServicesIsraelmass-casualty incidentsterrorism
Type
Field Report
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , April 2024 , pp. 224 - 227
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine

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