The Mental Anguish "Taking a Toll" on Israeli Medics Treating Syria's Wounded Refugees
Raphael Poch : Mar 6, 2015
Breaking Israel News
"In several more months, when I'll be a regular citizen, these nightmarish experiences with the wounded Syrians will claw at me at night to a far greater degree than the trials of the war in the summer." -An Israeli paramedic
(Israel)—According to medics in the IDF, mental anguish from the treatment of thousands of Syrians wounded from the fallout of the ongoing civil war is taking its toll. (Photo: IDF)
For over two years, Israel has opened its door to wounded Syrians in need of medical care, incurring both the exorbitant financial cost of that care and the mental anguish suffered by civilian doctors and IDF medics who treat the wounded.
The almost daily occurrences of situations under which IDF medics are asked to respond to usually involve traumatic and stressful situations, placing great strain on the mental health of each soldier.
In a special exposé, Ynet News gathered stories of the medical personnel who have been dealing with the horror, brutality and severity of treating injured Syrians over the last two years. Many of these soldiers are now receiving psychological treatment from mental health officers in the IDF.
A paramedic in the Golani brigade, who served in Operation Protective Edge and now serves in the Golan Heights, explained: "You can prepare yourself for combat like that in Operation Protective Edge, knowing that you have a limited number of ‘difficult days'. But in the Golan Heights, you face an unchanging reality of months. It's not a war, but rather a crazy routine filled with anonymous wounded people and strangers, on almost a daily basis."
"In several more months, when I'll be a regular citizen, these nightmarish experiences with the wounded Syrians will claw at me at night to a far greater degree than the trials of the war in the summer," he added.
Other soldiers made similar statements describing what is occurring in Syria as "institutionalized madness." (Photo: IDF)
"We had days so busy in which we were called to take in more and more wounded, that we barely had time to eat or drink," a paratrooper stationed near the northern border recalled.
The medical soldiers face a daunting task in trying to treat the myriad number of wounded that come through to Israel on a daily basis from Israel's war-torn enemy to the north. The injured often receive advance medical attention at an IDF base near the border after undergoing security checks to ascertain that they are not terrorists.
They are then transferred by ambulance to one of the four major northern hospitals in Israel—Poriya Hospital in Tiberias, Ziv Hospital in Safed, Rambam Hospital in Haifa or the Western Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya. The soldiers are not allowed to know the names of their patients due to security issues.
A female IDF paramedic serving on the northern front explained that some of the hardest cases to treat involve children.
"Some (of the patients) are children who you know were not involved in any kind of fighting and arrive with a nearly-detached leg, or an elderly man who wasn't treated for a week, whose hand is infected to the extent that you know that severing it is the only thing that will save his life," she said.
Soldiers from the IDF's Paratrooper Reconnaissance unit, who have been tasked with manning the border and transferring the wounded to Israel for the past year, have learned coping mechanisms to deal with the horror.
Read more here.