Itongadol.- The Israeli field hospital on the island of Cebu in the Philippines went online on Friday morning. Since then it has become the central medical facility in this part of the typhoon-torn region, serving a population of 250,000 and treating upwards of 300 patients per day, the manager of the IDF’s field hospital said Sunday.
Lt. Col. (res) Dr. Ofer Merin, a heart surgeon who otherwise serves as deputy director of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, said that Israel’s scout team, sent to the country last week, had decided to establish the field hospital in a remote area that lacked medical facilities. “We established our field hospital here, in Bogo City, alongside a hospital that usually has two-three physicians per shift,” Merin said.
The hospital serves a city of nearly 80,000 people and an island of 250,000, and Merin said he had not seen any other international medical teams in the region.
The IDF rescue and relief team arrived in the country on Thursday, one week after Typhoon Haiyan tore through the Philippine archipelago, killing at least 4,000 people and leaving over 600,000 homeless and millions of others without basic supplies.
The Israeli team consists of 125 people, including 25 doctors, 15 nurses, and dozens of medics, lab technicians and support staff.
Merin called it a multidisciplinary hospital, equipped with an operating room, an X-ray machine and incubators for pre-term babies.
Over the past 24 hours, Merin revealed, the staff had successfully delivered three premature babies, bringing the total of births delivered in the field hospital to 12. Of the babies born Sunday, all were under three kilograms and one was born seven weeks early