JERUSALEM, Israel – As the war with Iran settles into an uneasy ceasefire with the threat of missile hits still very real, hospitals that were moved underground to protect patients and staff while continuing to serve the nation are now moving patients back to the regular wards.
At the beginning of the 12-day Operation Rising Lion, Steve Walz, global media director for Tel Aviv’s Sheba Medical Center, told CBN News, “The minute the missiles started to hit in metro Tel Aviv, our hospital sprang into action. We started to move different divisions of the hospital into several underground hospitals that we have underneath the maternity wing and underneath the orthopedic rehabilitation wing.”
The staff first moved patients from the least defended part of the hospital.
“Within 72 hours, we moved down half a hospital, including moving very sick Jewish, Israeli Arab, and Palestinian children into an above-ground facility that still, I would say, is 90 to 95 percent finished. But that whole wing above ground is defended,” Walz explained.
“The hospital campus covers 200 acres, and a quarter of its 2,000 beds were moved underground. If necessary, they can move even more patients underground into wards already completed.
“There are parts of the hospital that are still being built, you know, rebuilding the campus. And every new building on this campus above ground will be fortified. So we’re constantly shifting. And, I think our people here have done an incredible job, as usual,” Walz told us.
They’ve treated an estimated 250 injured civilians in the past two weeks. Sheba Hospital has five underground facilities and one fortified above-ground war, and they’ve opened an underground field hospital to expand protected operations.
“It’s a tremendous buzz of activity, “Walz declared. “And it’s an amazing feat to do it – to transfer, you know, whole divisions on the ground so quickly. It’s an infrastructure miracle.”
Throughout the 12-day war, the hospital continued its overall operations, including the delivery of new babies.
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Rambam Medical Center in Haifa and others around the country also have underground facilities that are operational.
Last year, CBN News visited Sheba Hospital for an overall view of its subterranean patient care facilities. Walz told us at the time that, given this literally groundbreaking idea, other countries want help and guidance in building their own centers.
“Israel is unique because we get missiles all the time,” Walz stated. “Actually, Sheba Medical Center has been asked by other hospitals around the world, especially those that are – let’s say, in Germany – that are, unfortunately, close to the area where the Ukraine war is going on with Russia.”
Walz senses that it’s difficult for people in other parts of the world to grasp what Israelis are going through.
“They cannot possibly imagine what it is to run into your safe room, whether in the hospital, at home, with your family, all hours of the day and night, and literally pray that – you know – that nothing falls on you,” he said.
Walz contends that if this type of warfare happened elsewhere, the situation could be much worse.
“Remember, America and other countries around the world do not have the defensive missile systems that we have,” he observed. “So, you could imagine how tragic the numbers would be if something like that happened stateside and in other countries.”
