Israeli doctors are first foreign specialists to treat victims of Congo oil blast
Government agency sends 4 doctors and a nurse from the Sheba Medical Center to the area surrounding the village of Sange in eastern Congo.
By Cnaan Liphshiz Tags: Israel newsBujumbura, Burundi - Two weeks after the death of more than 200 people in an oil tanker explosion in Congo, Israeli doctors will be the first specialists sent to treat the dozens of burn victims who survived the blast.
 |
The Israeli delegation arriving in Burundi on Monday July 13, 2010. |
| Photo by: Cnaan Liphshiz |
Congolese President Joseph Kabila telephoned the Israeli delegation to the region to thank its members on Monday night, but activist said it was too limited in scope to make a lasting impact.
On Monday, the Agency for International Development Cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, MASHAV, sent four doctors and a nurse from Sheba Medical Center to the area surrounding the village of Sange in eastern Congo, where a truck carrying hundreds of kilotons of petroleum caught fire last Friday.
“We’re carrying half a ton of equipment to treat 30 injured in two locales,” said Dr. Eyal Winkler, deputy director of Sheba’s department of plastic and reconstructive Surgery. With Winkler are Drs. Shmuel Kalazkin, Ariel Tessone and Gil Gragov Nardini, and nurse Noa Anastasia Ouchakova.
The new arrivals will be working with a U.S.-born Israeli woman who lives in Congo and works with the foreign ministry, Gila Garawy. She says not all the patients are receiving anesthetics in the rural hospitals where they are treated, where electricity and running water are unreliable.
“When I came to visit them I could see their eyes light up with hope because they mistook me for the doctor from Israel they’d been expecting,” said Garaway, whose two sons live in Israel with her seven grandchildren. She also said that she had seen cases in which burn victims became “psychotic from pain.”
Jean-Michel Bolima, a social activist who was born in the eastern Congo city of Kisangani, said: “Any help is welcome and important, but we want to see actions that benefit more people than 31. This is a limited operation. Israel is always first to offer aid, and this is admirable. But it is not constructing a hospital there. Yet this would have made a serious impact on people’s lives.”
Haim Divon, head of Masahv, said that the agency has been supporting Gila Garawy in her efforts over the past year to open a burn-treatment center in Bukavu, near the village of Sange.
 |
The burned out wreckage of a tanker truck in Sange, eastern Congo, July 3, 2010. |
| Photo by: AP |
Why Facebook Connect?
Comment on Haaretz.com articles with your Facebook login, and share your thoughts on your own wall.
- Latest
- Most Viewed
- Most Rated
- Open all
Fascinating that Ha'aretz managed to find an "activist" to comment that Israel's help is insufficient. No country other than Congo is under any obligation to help the Congolese people... yet Israel has morals and is doing it anyway. Perhaps it's time for Ha'aretz to start putting reality ahead of your political agenda.
i am congolese from bukavu actually living in israel. i have background dealing with people that face such horrible trauma due to wars in the congo. when i heared about what happened in sange, i just phoned gila, knowing that she is managing a project in bukavu; i begged her with tears in my eyes, "please, do some thing". if there is way to save even one soul, it will be great. so she does. instead of criticising good actions, i think the doctors that went there deserve more respect. going to sange is not like drinking a cup of tea. they surely will face also bites from moskitoes and tropical rain and stress. may i have to remind all congolese that building hospital in congo is congo government business and not israeli's. there should be less expectation in that. mutombo dikembe, a born congolese living in the us managed to build a modern hospital in kinshasa with money from his pocket. drc officials should be more trustful in the way they plan the social welfare of the citizen; and for that they need israeli and other advanced countries advices. dont think that someone who is lying in hospital's bed with burns wounds, between death and life mind what wealth of minerals is the congo and who is going to deal with it. he mind going out from such horrible situation. and for that, i allow myself to thank those doctors and the foreign ministry for such spontaneity in behalf of the victims. i remind all the people writing comments that israel's cooperation with the congo through mashav is old then 30 years. cooperation means to give and to take; isn't it?
It is amazing how the Palestinians and the supporters of such radical organizations can not understand that Israel is a Jewish State. As a Jewish state it follows the TORAH (the bible of Jesus). Here it states that Israel must be a light unto all Nations. She must set an example to the world. Regardless of political issues Israel does this only because the TORAH tell her. The TORAH is Israels constitution. If the Palestinians and there supports would only stop hating for one moment they would understand; or are they to barbaric to comprehend. Hate can be a strong blindfold .
If you ask Israel's official point of view, why not to make inquiries at the PM office. They will tell you that there's no such thing as Israel's Constitution, and if there will be one day, it will certainly be not "the bible of Jesus". You will surely have more objections to your cosmic proposal from the Israelis than Palestinians. Nor is there an Israeli law of Israel being a "light unto all nations", even if many Israeli leaders draw on this to prop the exclusive status of Israel in the intl arena. Besides, to pass such ehh... peculiar law, "all the nations" must amend their constitutions. You can start working on such lobbying if you have spare time.
Have these Israeli doctors heard of the children with shrapnel wounds in Gaza?
What are you talking about? The facts are clear and undeniable, look it up yourself. Stop this smear campaign against Israel now!
Or how to exercise soft power techniques for the Israeli interests. Conquer the Kongo soul before exploiting its rich soil.Israeli interests have invested billions for the the soil and its commodities;now time for a show off of the angelic face.
on them. Let sanctimonious Ireland help ,it's their "Catholic duty" ,isn't it ?
My hat off for your pitiless (although somewhat unwitting) exposure of the most blatant PR outlet in this planet. If I were as abjectly anti-Swedish as you are anti-Irish, I would perhaps attribute your "loaf of bread in exchange to silence of criticism" notion of charity to Swedish Protestantism.
Imagine in times of Peace? The Palestinians are fighting with the very ones who are most capable of helping them achieve a peaceful State and who would give their utmost to help them become prosperous and contribute a legacy to the world.
... sowing death and destruction in the region. The Palestinians are fighting the ones who at the very moment are doing what they have been doing for decades: implementing the de-palestinisation program by all means at their disposition, paving the way for the golden calf of the Greater Israel. For the quasi-religious sloganeers as yourself, such stunt might work, since your 160 years old dogma of Jewish national messianism would remain unshaken even without the PR episode of four doctors. For the Palestinians dispossessed and mutilated on the daily basis, you will have to come up with better argument than that of a white-man's-burden - subjecting the local people to a slower or quicker expulsion for "their own interest".
You're either an unrepentant liar or you have no clue of the area except what you've been nursed with since birth, and that's a caustic cocktail of historical and spiritual revisionism. Tell me, what progress have the Palestinians made by choosing rejection, terror, and more terror over the last 62 years? What if they had also chosen to declare a State when offered the chance back then? If you think you can fool people with your taqiyya in this day and age, you are sorely mistaken. As mentioned, get a proper education then build a proper State, or step aside and let a G-d fearing woman have the chance as your male leaders' terror testosterone just keep digging the Palestinians a deeper hole to climb out of.
I hold PhD summa cum laude from the top French University, with my thesis of Jewish national idea in relation to the Zionist urban geography and politics in Jerusalem in the early twenties, and in this field I have been since my years of studies in Jerusalem. May I humbly give you a piece of advice, Lavi from Seattle. Next time you'll feel the urge to open you mouth and tell someone "get an education", close it and count until ten giving yourself another chance. You'll also do yourself a great service by getting familiar with the charter of Likud, or more precisely, with the clause of non-recognition that you might think is proper to Hamas charter. Netanyahu had officially backed the two-state solution only few years ago, and to this day avoided to come back to his words, while at the same time perpetuating the settlement spread and de-palestinisation of East Jerusalem at every opportunity. You might think Netanyahu would have uttered his two-state solution without the years of Palestinian backfighting. Sadly, this is precisely how the Palestinians achieved the little but vitally important progress. I have no doubt you'd advice the Palestinian leaders arrange instead the full-time picket in a tent outside the Knesset.
That is simply why
Is it that no good can ever be done by Israel? If that's how you know, just say it out loud! Say it like a Durson
Silly Em. You'll just have to accept the fact that your world isn't black and white and Israel helps everyone she can. Just like we helped Turkey with their major earthquake and set up field hospitals. Pity we don't get it better recorded for some world credit though.
Is it that no good from Israel can come ever; thus, you must deduce that Israel in Congo is for selfish reason's? Explain yourself!
Israel sent their doctors to Congo, others sent their bombs to Kampala. Even the blind can see!