MAGEN DAVID ADOM welcomes volunteer first responders from all over the world. Michael, from Austria, remembers the day he saved a baby’s life:

“I was assigned to Mobile Intensive Care Unit #23 at the Ashdod Station when the call came in for my team to pick up a 17-day-old baby in the dangerous border region between Gaza and Israel.

“We drove to Erez Crossing at the Gaza border and met two Palestinian paramedics who took our incubator back across the border to retrieve the baby. When they returned 25 minutes later, one of the paramedics was walking alongside the incubator with a manual hand pump that he was using to assist the baby’s breathing.

“Our paramedic said, ‘Michael, I want you to take over.’ He told me to give the baby a breath by compressing his chest with two fingers very softly every three seconds. If I did it too hard, I would burst the lungs and the baby would die; if I did it too softly, too much CO2 would build up and the baby would die.

“The journey to Barzilai Hospital was the longest 45 minutes of my life. My job was to give the baby a breath every three seconds and to make sure the baby’s chest rose when I did.

“When we entered the children’s intensive care area, many of the mothers came over to see what was happening. I noticed one mother in particular. I could tell that she was an observant Jew. This baby was a Palestinian. But what I saw I will never forget. This Jewish woman dropped to her knees and burst into tears. It was not her child. She did not know this child. But she saw that the child was suffering.

“I am a religious Jew; I’m wearing a kippah (yarmulke), and I’m saving the life of an Arab baby from Gaza. But this is who we are. In MAGEN DAVID ADOM, we help everyone. Whether you are Jewish, Arab, Christian, Druze, Buddhist, or any religion, race, or sex, we will treat you as our own.”

The 33,000 volunteer EMTs and paramedics of MAGEN DAVID ADOM are modern-day heroes who work around the clock to ensure that every person in Israel in need receives medical care. No one is excluded because of their ethnicity, national origin, religion, or political affiliation.

Thank you for supporting the lifesaving work of MAGEN DAVID ADOM.