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By Judy Siegel-Itzokvich, www.JPost.com

Film shows cooperation between Jewish and Palestinian volunteer paramedics in United Hatzalah.

No one believed it could happen, but it has: An Israeli living in England has made a politics-free film about cooperation between Jewish and Palestinian volunteer paramedics for the Orthodox Jerusalem organization United Hatzalah, who save lives together in the capital’s western and eastern neighborhoods.

The 25-minute program, Jerusalem SOS, was broadcast four times last month by the global Arab TV network Al Jazeera in English, which has also put it online for all to see

It is an unusual sight: Arabs wearing orange vests printed with the red Star of David team up with haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews wearing black kippot, their sidecurls and tzitzit (ritual fringes) blowing in the wind. And the partners have only praise for each other.

“I don’t care which person I’m saving. I even go to [the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of] Mea Shearim on Shabbat,” says Fadi, one of 100 Arabs currently volunteering for UH.

“Saving lives is a religious act for me. Forget all the politics and the mess. People need to live.”

“The Arabs are so devoted,” says a haredi paramedic.

“Their chest compressions are incredible. They respect Jewish sensitivities, especially on Shabbat.”

Eli Beer, the haredi founder and head of the lifesaving rescue organization, commented, “It’s amazing to see how well we all get along together, without conflict. Everybody knows and respects each other.”

In a phone interview from London, the filmmaker, Keren Ghitis, told The Jerusalem Post how the piece came together.

“I started teaching people how to make videos in Latin America and Africa so they could tell their own stories. I made this video as part of the Ir Amim Initiative, which solicited ideas for films from Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers.

We were asked to tell things that usually do not get attention,” she said.

She submitted it to Al Jazeera, which, she said, was very interested in broadcasting it. Nothing was censored or dictated to toe any line. The first showing was on January 16 in prime time.

“The comments from around the world, including the Arab world, have been very positive. There has also been a lot of mention of it on Facebook. A Palestinian community in the U.S. even asked us for permission to use it for educational purposes,” she said, adding, “It broke a lot of stereotypes.”

The Al Jazeera Network has more than 65 bureaus around the world, with a staff of 3,000 – including more than 400 journalists from more than 60 countries. There is a bureau that hires Israeli Jews and Arabs. The English station has more than 1,000 experienced staffers of more than 50 nationalities and broadcasts to some 220 million households in more than 100 countries.

“I wanted to reach people and see more collaboration between Arabs and Jews,” Ghitis explained when asked why she chose the subject. “More support is needed for medical services in east Jerusalem.”

The UH-trained Palestinian paramedics note in the film that there are often delays in Magen David Adom reaching the sick and wounded in east Jerusalem because no ambulance can get there without being accompanied by a police or military escort. UH Arabs and Jews often get there first on their ambucycles. In addition, many streets are unnamed, and houses have no identifying numbers.

Beer said Al Jazeera had set no conditions for the broadcast.

Speaking to the Post from Davos, he said he had just met Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, who received the Nobel Prize.

“He was amazed,” he said.

“He and lots of people from all over the world tell me that the fact that I am a proud Jew and Israeli makes Israel look very good.”

Beer wants to have Arabs all over the country working hand-in-hand with haredi, religious, and secular Jews for his rescue organization. “I want about 3,000 volunteers, about 15 percent of of them Christian and Muslims.”

Jews and Muslims do not oppose working together, he says, despite the invisible boundaries and suspicions that separate their communities.

“In the beginning, I met a few who were surprised about working together, but after they saw that they are great people and really professional, they all like it,” said Beer.

The Jews also work on Shabbat and festivals in an emergency, and the Muslims on Fridays and Ramadan.

The film follows volunteers like Hezi, a former yeshiva student who works in a fishmonger’s shop and has volunteered with UH for 15 years, and Fadi, a security guard at Al-Aksa Mosque.

Fadi, presented as a loving father hugging his young children at home, has been an assistant to the Jewish owner of a Mea Shearim hardware store since the age of 14. His family encourages him to go any time he gets an emergency call, as does Shlomo, the shop owner. “He is like a son to me,” says the Mea Shearim retailer.

Hezi is not worried when dispatched to the Damascus Gate in east Jerusalem, and works with Red Crescent medics.

“Since they started working together in 2010, hundreds of lives have been saved,” Ghitis concluded.

See the film made by Keren Ghitis with English, Hebrew, and Arabic spoken:

Between 1948 and 1967, a border separated Arabs living in east Jerusalem from Jews living in the rest of the city.

Today, much of the city’s Arab population remains in the east, while the majority of its Jewish population lives in the west.

Although they are free to do so, few residents move between the city’s Arab and Jewish areas. In the minds of most, the border that separated Jews and Arabs 40 years ago still exists today.

“Witness” follows Jewish and Arab volunteer paramedics who choose to cross these boundaries.

Hezi, a Hassidic Jew, has been working for United Hatzalah, an emergency service run by orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, for more than 15 years. In 2010, the organization started employing Arab paramedics, and Fadi joined to improve first aid services in Jerusalem’s Arab neighbourhoods.

In Jerusalem SOS, we follow Fadi and Hezi as they traverse Jerusalem, providing first aid at all hours to the city’s residents.

By Larry Rich, www.Israel21c.org

At Israel’s Emek Hospital, it doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish, Christian, or Muslim.

Muhammed Kalalwe with his father, Hafed. Photo courtesy of Emek Medical Center.

On Thursday, June 3, just three days after the Gaza flotilla raid, 15-year-old Muhammed Kalalwe was working in his family’s fields. They live in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank, bordering Israel’s Jezreel Valley and the city of Afula. The boy noticed a deadly viper snake and tried killing it with a rock, but the dangerous creature struck out and bit his right palm.

Screams and panic ensued and within minutes, the boy’s father, Hafed, grabbed his stricken son and rushed him to the Jenin Hospital. They were ill-prepared to treat the boy, had no anti-serum and decided to send him by ambulance to the Emek Medical Center in Afula, Israel.

Emek, which was founded 86 years ago, is a community hospital that serves a culturally rich population that is equally divided (50/50) between Jews and Arabs. It has a mixed medical staff of Jews and Arabs, and its guiding philosophy is coexistence through medicine.

Hafed later related that he was genuinely afraid to be taken to Emek because he was sure that they would be ignored and not even spoken to. His son’s palm and arm were critically swollen and the pain was unbearable.

The humanitarian reality of Emek shocked both the father and son as they were immediately greeted in Arabic, rushed into the ER where Emek’s multi-ethnic staff administered life-saving anti-serum and brought the boy back from the brink of death.

Muhammed lay for the next two days in the pediatric intensive care unit and is now resting comfortably in Emek’s pediatric surgical department from where he will be released in the next couple of days.

I asked the father how he felt now about Emek Hospital and the Israelis he has come into contact with. “Our people do not know the truth about you and our medicine has a long way to go,” he told me. “My son and I are not the same as we were before this happened and I will share this with my family and friends.”

As he spoke, he gesticulated determinedly in a classic Middle Eastern style and when we shook hands as I wished them both well, the grip was firm and real. I have shaken many such hands and gazed into many Palestinian eyes that have seen a reality here at Emek Medical Center that they never expected to see.

Larry Rich is the director of development at Emek Medical Center in Afula.

A doctor with the Israeli delegation tells ISRAEL21c what it was like to try to save as many lives as possible in Haiti, after the devastating earthquake.

By Daniel Ben-Tal, www.Israel21c.org

An unexpected call up: Dr. Ian Miskin, an infectious disease specialist, joined the Israeli delegation to Haiti in the wake of the earthquake.

Dr. Ian Miskin, one of Israel’s foremost infectious disease specialists, admits it will take time for him to fully internalize his experiences in post-earthquake Haiti. For two weeks he was totally immersed in aiding rescue missions and treating survivors rescued from the rubble.

There were some uplifting experiences, he says, such as when he helped to treat a child who had been rescued after being trapped under debris for a full week, but he also witnessed many deaths. It was like nothing he had seen before.

“It was an unexpected call-up,” the 53-year-old British-born doctor, who has lived in Israel since age 14, tells ISRAEL21c “A colleague in infectious diseases asked if I wanted to go. I called my wife [who is a pediatrician] and she said yes, so I went. Within two hours I was on the list. We met at five o’clock that evening at Tel Hashomer Hospital for a briefing, then I went home to prepare and early the following morning turned up with two weeks’ worth of clothes. We all had [immunization] shots, heard a lecture about the situation and were briefed about the operation.”

Miskin, who spends about a month each year in uniform as an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) doctor in the reserves, knew only two members of the delegation beforehand. “We were introduced to each other then got to work. Eighty percent were soldiers serving in the standing army. I was one of about a dozen reservists. Somehow, within 24 hours all the equipment was loaded on a jumbo for the long flight. By the time we arrived at the airport, we were really tired.”

The 200-strong team used the 16-hour flight on an El Al plane to recharge its batteries. “The first-class section was set aside for sleeping. We originally planned to fly to Santa Domingo – only two hours out we learned that we could land in Port-au-Prince.”

Working till they dropped

On arrival, they rapidly set up camp in a soccer field not far from the airport. “We had no food, and made a kabalat Shabbat [Jewish ritual for welcoming the Sabbath with bread and wine] with two pitas and a glass of grape juice. We went to sleep at seven then were woken at midnight to unload the jumbo, which had just arrived. By 10:30 the following morning the first patient arrived – there was no time for an opening ceremony. From that point on, we worked non-stop, at full capacity.”

According to Miskin, on a professional level, the team learned much from the experience. “We made plans in advance – some worked out, some didn’t. To set up a field hospital was the correct decision. It was the only one in Haiti for five days. We also had a pretty sophisticated patient identification system – each patient was photographed on arrival and had an electronic record of his treatment that went with him.”

Miskin has nothing but praise for his colleagues. “They wouldn’t set a time when they would finish their shifts – they just worked until they collapsed. We had 40 doctors, 20 nurses and 20 medics and paramedics with us. People were doing things that weren’t their job – when the eye doctor finished treating his patients he manned the gate. Everyone helped each other. People were looking out for each other all the time, seeing who needs help.”

There is still much work for international aid missions to do in Haiti, Miskin says, adding that there is a growing problem of infections among survivors, which often lead to endemics and widespread diarrhea.

“There are still a huge number of maimed people out there – everything was infected. People who were severely crushed often died because their kidneys packed in – there was nothing we could do. Those who had wounds on their torsos died.”

Who decides who lives or dies

“On the last day we were working, the Monday, we saw 150 patients. We closed at 4pm, but then, after the last patient had already been admitted, a little girl came up. She was given a local anesthetic and we operated on her.”

The medical staff found itself confronted with issues of medical ethics. “Obviously, we had a problem that we couldn’t treat everyone, and someone had to make life-and-death decisions. Because we thought it was important, we set up ad-hoc, three-doctor ethics committees. Nobody else foresaw the problem – it was something we found we had to do. It’s something that only Israelis would think of – doing it together.”

The mission worked in less-than-ideal conditions. “The scary part was the first days – we had almost nothing to eat, no shower, no way to sleep properly. We slept in pup tents, but it was so hot and humid, so damp. Everything you left outside was soaked… our electricians set up satellite telephone lines to Israel so that we could call home, but because of the work load, we often didn’t have five free minutes to call home.”

He notes the importance that was attached to maintaining the team’s health – both physical and psychological, so that its members would have the strength to give their all. “We had a psychiatrist and psychologist with us – we all needed that help. There was a huge amount of stress – and remember, many of the group were 20-year-olds. We just worked until we dropped. I’ve never seen anything like it. There was a huge amount of pressure on every member of staff.”

The team’s commanders insisted that their charges take time off. “Three hours in the shade on the beach – everyone went there once. There was even a list to make sure that everyone went. Rest is important. Also, everyone went out into the city at least once to see what was going on.

Israelis first on the scene

“It was very hard work. In time, we were joined by a Colombian surgery theater, working side-by-side. They also worked their asses off. The Colombians were terrific. They brought us drugs and equipment we’d run short of, such as a blood analyzer. A group of Canadian nurses also helped, and there were some Haitians who spoke Creole. I used my basic French to communicate with patients. The American civilian hospital also took a little of the load off us,” says Miskin.

The Israeli response to the crisis received a tremendous amount of praise, which some commentators described as “disproportionate.” Miskin responds drily: “The advantage of the Israeli delegation was that we got there first. Haiti is the poorest country in the western world. All the buildings collapsed, and there was rubble everywhere. That’s what you’re starting from.

“The operation was so well organized because it’s the army, which can muster people within hours. Every morning at seven we held a morning parade. There were 30 majors, 10 lieutenant colonels and three full colonels in the team – but that didn’t matter.”

By Dr. Jonathan Halevy

In the days following the Haiti earthquake, the international press was awash in astonishing reports commending Israel’s tremendous work in medical disaster response and setting up a field hospital operation that had other nations looking on in awe. Even as these reports left us feeling intense pride, our reaction back in Israel has been one of far less surprise.

Dr. Jonathan Halevy

From CBS to CNN to MSNBC and numerous other outlets across the media landscape, wide-eyed medical reporters witnessed the Israeli operation with an underlying tone of combined admiration and jealousy.

Why is it that of the dozens of countries contributing to the relief effort, with delegations of all shapes and sizes, it’s the Israelis who travel halfway around the world and within hours have a fully operational hospital in place? Journalists pointed with amazement at our mobile imaging machinery and sedated patients on ventilators and asked outright why anyone else couldn’t be doing this.

The reason we in Israel are not surprised is because we know that we’ve been training for years for just these types of scenarios. We can also appreciate that Israel sees part of its mandate as a military and medical leader to make sure that expertise and know-how will benefit the international community should the opportunity present itself.

And so, as much as our enemies desire to paint the IDF solely as a hawkish, war-seeking powerhouse, the mission in Haiti shows just the opposite to be true.

Admittedly, Israel’s adeptness in launching these types of operations stems from a history of confronting hostilities and being prepared to address every possible threat. I personally recall from my days as commander of a field hospital in the First Lebanon War that we set up such a field medical facility within hours and that “real-life” training was just one of many invaluable tests that would benefit the IDF Medical Corps in the future.

Over the years, the brave men and women of our army have recalled those lessons on all too many occasions, both here and, just as often, in ports of call in other parts of the world.

So when the news came across the wires that Haiti had been rocked by a devastating earthquake, the question was never if Israel would be there to respond, but only how soon.

Those of us involved in emergency management and disaster response know all too well that Israel has a unique advantage over most, if not all, nations in this discipline. Every week, a major drill is held at a hospital somewhere in Israel. Our protocols and emergency departments have become models for hospitals all around the world.

Despite our relatively small size and urban landscapes that pale in comparison to most of the West, our Home Front Command has made it a principal training objective to remain ever-ready for all types of disasters.

Even with the very limited traditional communication tools that exist between Israel and our rescue teams in Haiti, I had the chance to be in touch with my colleagues from the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem on several occasions after they landed in the earthquake zone. The underlying tone that came across was one of overwhelming shock at the scope of the disaster they faced, yet they admitted that they felt as prepared as humanly possible for the medical realities they were confronting.

What has been most challenging, without a doubt, has been the emotional experiences. Many of those in the field hospital were seasoned veterans of the military and have treated hundreds if not thousands of victims of warfare and terrorism. However, they reported that perhaps more than ever before, in Haiti desperate questions of medical ethics had to be asked even before the ones over the best course of treatment. Each patient had to be judged based on the chances for his or her survival. The medical process only then commenced if the doctors and nurses believed that this case had better chances for a positive outcome than the victim that lay immediately next in line.

These were devastating questions for even the most hardened medical professional and ones that challenge Israel’s medical teams countless times each day.

Beyond these stories of disaster and loss, the Israeli experience in Haiti still has been one of hope and promise. The world quickly learned that the “successes” we achieved there came because we appreciated the continuous need for this type of training. Even more so, it is recognized that we have a role in contributing to the greater welfare of the international community.

Perhaps it’s unfortunate that it took the devastating tragedy in Haiti for the world to understand this valuable lesson that Israel has an enormous amount of good to contribute, both in good times and bad. Yet we can also be hopeful and confident that it’s one not soon forgotten.

***************************************************

Dr. Jonathan Halevy is director-general of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. This piece first appeared in The Jerusalem Post.

By Judy Siegel-Itzkovich www.JPost.com

The volunteer organization Ezer Mizion is holding a drive on Wednesday for blood samples to find a compatible donor for a six-year-old Kfar Saba girl named Amit, who has leukemia.

Six year old Amit awaits a bone marrow transplant

People between 18 and 50 years old and in good health who have never donated a sample to any bone marrow registry are invited to give a small sample to see whether they have a compatible type for stem cell transplants.

In addition to Amit, other cancer sufferers in Israel and around the world could benefit, especially Jews who have related tissue types. Thousands of new potential stem cell donors are expected to join Ezer Mizion’s registry.

The organization is also raising money to process the blood samples, each of which costs $46. Donations can be made and more information is available on the Web site at www.ezermizion.org.

The union of Jewish Agency staffers announced Tuesday that it was donating $4,600 to process 100 samples. Union head Yona Bezaleli and Jewish Agency chairman Ze’ev Bielski asked all staffers to join the project and find a compatible donor for Amit.

By Alex West
www.TheSun.co.uk

At least 40 al-Qaeda fanatics died horribly after being struck down with the disease that devastated Europe in the Middle Ages.

The killer bug, also known as the plague, swept through insurgents training at a forest camp in Algeria, North Africa. It came to light when security forces found a body by a roadside.

The victim was a terrorist in AQLIM (al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb), the largest and most powerful al-Qaeda group outside the Middle East. It trains Muslim fighters to kill British and US troops.

Now al-Qaeda chiefs fear the plague has been passed to other terror cells — or Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. One security source said: “This is the deadliest weapon yet in the war against terror. Most of the terrorists do not have the basic medical supplies needed to treat the disease. It spreads quickly and kills within hours. This will be really worrying al-Qaeda.”

Black Death comes in various forms.

Bubonic Plague is spread by bites from infected rat fleas. Symptoms include boils in the groin, neck and armpits.

In Pneumonic Plague, airborn bacteria spread like flu. It can be in the body for more than a week — highly contagious but not revealing tell-tale symptoms.

The al-Qaeda epidemic began in the cave hideouts of AQLIM in Tizi Ouzou province, 150km east of the capital Algiers. The group, led by wanted terror boss Abdelmalek Droudkal, was forced to turn its shelters in the Yakouren forest into mass graves and flee. The extremists supporting madman Osama bin Laden went to Bejaia and Jijel provinces — hoping the plague did not go with them.

A source said: “The emirs (leaders) fear surviving terrorists will surrender to escape a horrible death.”

AQLIM boss Droudkal claims to command around 1,000 insurgents. Training camps are also based in Morocco, Tunisia and Nigeria. AQLIM bombed the UN headquarters in Algiers in 2007, killing 41. Attacks across Algeria last year killed at least 70 people.

In an interview last July, Droudkal boasted his cell was in constant contact with other al-Qaeda “brothers”.

By Judy Siegel-Itzkovich The Jerusalem Post

The war in Gaza has not slowed down the work of Save a Child’s Heart (SACH), the voluntary organization based at Holon’s Wolfson Medical Center that has provided free cardiac surgery to over 600 Palestinians and nearly 2,000 others from around the world.

A three-week-old baby named Jafar from Gaza underwent surgery on the last Sunday in December, two days after Israel’s air strikes on Gaza were launched.

Dr. Lior Sasson, SACH’s chief surgeon, has done so many operations in recent weeks that he can hardly keep track. Jafar, he said, would almost surely have died quickly after birth because he was born with a severe congenital heart defect, the transposition of the great arteries.

“Tomorrow we hope to take out the drainage tube. He is a very sweet baby. We don’t care if he comes from a Hamas family or what. He is a baby,” he said.

In December alone, the SACH staff of 70 – including five physicians – performed lifesaving surgery on 10 children from Gaza. “It is not difficult to get them here. We have a well-oiled operation, and the security forces know us well. There are no problems, even during a war,” Sasson said.

Jafar was accompanied by his grandmother; Sasson conversed with her with the small amount of Arabic he knows.

SACH (www.saveachildsheart.org) was founded by the late Dr. Amram (Ami) Cohen, a pediatric heart surgeon who came on aliya from the U.S. in 1992 and quickly established the organization, which he turned into an important contributor to children’s health worldwide. He joined Wolfson’s staff and served as the deputy chief of cardiovascular surgery and head of pediatric cardiac surgery.

In 1988, while serving in the U.S. armed forces in Korea, the head of the international organization Save the Hearts approached him. The organization was sending orphaned and indigent Korean children to Western countries for medical care not available locally. Cohen was so impressed with the idea that he requested and received permission from his superiors to participate in the program, and during the rest of his time in Korea, performed 35 pediatric cardiac surgeries. Cohen died in a tragic accident while climbing the Kilimanjaro Mountain in 2001.

“Ami would be very proud of us that we are continuing what he started by operating on young children from Gaza,” Sasson concluded. Despite the world financial crisis, SACH is still able to attract donations with which the organization is able to continue.

By Willem Dercksen, The Jerusalem Post

Five-year-old Philipp, who has Down’s syndrome, is floating in the water next to a female dolphin and her newborn calf. Gone is his usual impatience. He gently caresses the mother’s back. The mother takes care that her calf is out of his reach.

It is Philipp’s second week at the reef. “He is growing day by day,” his mother Marlit, explains. His first day was hard. “Everything Philipp doesn’t know, he doesn’t want. He didn’t want a wet suit, he didn’t want to go into the water and he didn’t want to be with [trainer] Sophie. We wondered what we started here.”

Philipp’s father Uwe, and his big brother, Pierre, also came to Eilat, in Israel. The care and the security of the family are important for the results of the therapy.

The second day was better. “Philipp was curious, he watched and he accepted Sophie, although he was gesturing all the time that he wanted his father,” Marlit says. Philipp cannot talk yet. His parents taught him a sign language to facilitate the step to talking.

The dolphins are stimulating Philipp. “This second week we see him making efforts to utter words all the time.”

Sophie Donio is one of the pioneers of the Dolphin Reef. She started as a diving master. “I noticed how deeply the dolphins affected our visitors,” she says. After a year, she proposed starting dolphin therapy for disabled children. Her proposal was accepted and she developed the program herself. “Step by step it improved. Still, every day I learn more.”

Now, Donio refers to it as “a supportive experience with the aid of dolphins. We are not trying to cure or heal people. We are giving moral support.”

Kids and Dolphins

The Dolphin Reef pays homage to a distinctive philosophy. The dolphins, a group of bottlenoses, are not forced to interact with humans. They are free to choose between human company and the continuation of their daily routine of hunting, courting, playing and socializing. The reef, a corner in the Gulf of Eilat closed by nets, provides the dolphins with a natural environment. The water is deep and full of fish, allowing them to hunt for most of their food themselves. Their social life is rich. The first time I visited the reef, a baby dolphin had been born. To celebrate, the whole group of dolphins escorted the mother and her calf for an hour and a half as they cavorted along the contours of the reef.

In addition to Donio, the reef has four other trainers. They know the dolphins, they can anticipate their behavior and they know their likes and dislikes. The trainers also have the ability to understand the needs and possibilities of their impaired pupils.

Each therapy session has two parts: in the sea and on a platform. In the water, the trainers mediate contact between the dolphins and their pupil. On the platform, the trainers play games with the children, very often closely watched or supported by one or more curious dolphins. All activities are dependent on the mental and physical abilities of the children.

PHILIPP WAS not planned. Nevertheless, Marlit was flying high when she noticed her pregnancy. After giving birth, she was completely shattered. “On the ultrasound the embryo seemed to be completely in order. I didn’t do an amniocentesis so as not to endanger his life. Now I am glad I didn’t, because during the pregnancy, I would have requested an abortion.”

Uwe and Pierre were a big support after Philipp’s birth. From the first minute they fell in love with him. For Marlit, it took a long time. “After two days I stopped crying for myself and started crying for the baby. But I continued crying for months for the baby I didn’t get.” Later, she understood that her pain was necessary to accept the child she had gotten and to be able to love him and to care for him. “Now, Philipp is my heart and my soul. He changed us all. Material things, like a new car or fashionable clothes, are not that important anymore. We experience that love, and our family is so much more important.”

It is not easy to have a child with Down’s syndrome. “You never know what Philipp will do. You can’t lose sight of him for a second.” Before Philipp was born, Marlit worked as a surgical assistant. She doesn’t have the time anymore. At home, Philipp gets therapy too, speech therapy, music therapy (“He is crazy about music”) and riding therapy (“He loves horseback riding the best”).

Because Philipp was not developing as Marlit and Uwe wanted him to, they began dolphin therapy. Marlit had read about it, and also saw a program on TV in her home in Lindenscheid, Germany. The finances were the main obstacle. The family has only one income, and the trip to Eilat, as well as their two-week stay in a hotel, are expensive. “We organized a flea-market in our home town to collect money. The Dolphin Kids [a German organization informing the public about dolphin therapy] showed a documentary movie, a supermarket sponsored drinks and snacks and a friend contacted the local press. We never thought that so many people were willing to help.”

The more therapy sessions I observe, the more impressive Donio becomes. Although she doesn’t speak German, she is able to communicate with Philipp effortlessly. Everything shows that they understand each other. In the water as well on the platform, Donio keeps eye contact all the time. Thus she knows how far she can go and how long Philipp is keeping his concentration.

She has a very special bond with the dolphins: They like to approach her, and they seem to understand Philipp’s possibilities. During a ball game on the platform, Donio engages one of the dolphins to throw the ball to Philipp a few times, by using his nose. Later, one of the dolphins lends a bottlenose when Philipp drops a plastic basket in the water.

“Today was a very good session,” Donio says close to the end of Philipp’s second week. “In the water he is more and more controlled in his interactions with the dolphins. Today he was really caressing them tenderly. And did you see us playing games on the platform? It was the first time Philipp laughed aloud. Everything shows that he is getting more and more confident and brave. Maybe I will let him swim with a mask tomorrow.”

Marlit and Uwe are equally enthusiastic. “Here in Eilat, Philipp became more loose and relaxed, more independent too,” Marlit says. “At home, he asks for help for everything. Yesterday we saw him take a bottle and pour himself a glass of water on his own.”

During this conversation, Philipp is sitting on one of the many cushions on a floating platform, listening to music on his headphones. “Also in the water you could notice that he gained courage,” Uwe adds. “He is not sticking to Sophie all the time. It is important for his future development that he learns to fight his fears.”

CHAN IS crying on this, his first day. He is in the sea with Donio. When putting his wet suit on, his little finger got stuck and it did hurt. “Maybe it was still painful, or maybe it was just the fright” Donio comments when they climb out of the water. She is satisfied with the start. “Cindy (the paterfamilias of the dolphin family) was with us all the time. Other dolphins came to touch Chan’s feet.”

I had noticed too that dolphins were swimming next to Donio and Chan all the time. It seemed as if the dolphins felt that Chan needed them. “Chan did not react so much to the dolphins,” Donio continues, “but he was watching them. It is amazing to start the session with a crying kid and to get such a happy ending.” She is crazy about Chan. “What a sweet boy.” When I ask her if she has these feelings towards all of her pupils, she just smiles.

Chan, six, lacks control over his muscles. Doctors diagnosed cerebral palsy (or more specifically, spastic quadriplegia) two weeks after his birth. It was caused by an infection his mother, Dunja Franke had caught during the pregnancy.

The bad news hit Franke hard. “I cried and cried and cried. My own parents died when I was six and I wanted to give this child everything I missed. In the first period after his birth, I was not able to feed him, to change his clothes, nothing. Family and friends helped me to get through.”

While still in the hospital in Cologne, Chan received Vojta therapy, stimulation of the sensorimotor system’s reflex points. When Franke started crying during the first session, the therapist told her to leave. “Your child will not gain anything from a crying mother,” she said. “She was right” Franke realizes now. “Looking back, I feel grateful for her remarks.” When Chan smiled for the first time, Franke returned to her old self.

Following the advice of the Vojta therapist, Franke treats Chan as a normal child as far as possible. “His father cannot do that. He doesn’t dare to leave Chan alone for a second. He wanted Chan to sleep in our bed. He didn’t join the therapy sessions and he was crying on a daily basis, also in Chan’s presence.” Franke felt like she had to take care of two babies. “Chan’s father loves him very much, but he cannot accept that his son is impaired.” The parents separated after two years. Now Chan visits his father every other weekend.

Chan had dolphin therapy before they came to Eilat. “When Chan was nearly two years old, the two of us went to Florida. There, in the water, he spoke his first word: mama.” A year later they went to Sharm e-Sheikh. “Unfortunately, in that period no dolphins showed up.” Later, Franke and Chan went to Spain twice. “Chan also learned a lot there.” Suddenly, he used words like “you” and “me.” One evening in Spain he said: “You also eat.” (Franke always feeds Chan first.) The dolphin therapy does not help Chan in physically; there is no cure for his disease. It only works mentally.

Franke had to be creative, too, to be able to afford the therapy in Eilat. This time a cousin was the guardian angel by donating the revenues from a benefit concert by his punk band. In Eilat she is receiving practical help from her brother and sister. Together they are renting an apartment and both assist on the platform and in transporting Chan. He cannot sit nor move on his own.

Even an outsider can notice that Chan benefits from the therapy. He is shining – in the water, on the platform and after the sessions in a shady spot on the reef’s secluded beach. I get an enthusiastic response when I ask him if he enjoys the therapy. But he doesn’t want me to carry him into the water. “Too tired.”

A BIT SKEPTICAL by nature, I wonder whether the effects of the dolphin therapy will last. Isn’t it just that being on a holiday, in a powerful environment of desert and sea, relaxes a child and his parents, evoking different behavior than at home?

When I express these thoughts to Donio, she walks into her office to get me a book. The doctoral thesis of Nicole Kohn, a German scientist. “Try your best, I cannot read that language myself.”

The thesis reports on the effects of dolphin therapy among 193 multiply disabled children. About half of them received dolphin therapy in Eilat, the others in Key Largo, Florida. It was the first time that a survey on this scale had been done. Kohn bases her findings on interviews with parents, teachers and therapists.

Her research does not leave much doubt that the dolphin therapy has significant positive effects on cognitive, motor and/or emotional development. It also shows that these effects last – she repeated her interviews six weeks after the end of therapy.

Another significant finding is that when the development of a child improves, the parents benefit too. Many parents reported that the quality of their own lives had improved due to the therapy.

Back home, I wait three months before calling Philipp’s parents to ask if they still notice the effects of the therapy. Philipp, Marlit proudly tells me, spoke his first full sentence: “Papa come.” Moreover, his fine motor skills improved, he does not need a diaper anymore at night and he makes an effort to dress and undress himself. “In a way, we also got therapy as a family,” Marlit concludes. “We learned that Philipp is able to do much more than we thought he could and we also learned how to challenge him.”

From Chan’s mother I wanted to know if this time too something beautiful happened to her son. “Chan looks up now if he hears something,” Franke says. “He is using more words, and if I turn a video about dolphins on, he starts laughing and telling me: ‘There, we were also there.’”

The Dolphin Reef in Eilat has a Web site, www.dolphinreef.co.il, that provides information on the therapy program.

By Stuart Winer, www.Israel21c.org

A new development that will one day enable the removal of breast lumps and tumors with a device that is no more invasive than a needle prick is very cool. Literally.

Israel’s Arbel Medical hopes that its IceSense technology will pave the way for simple cryotherapy, a method of surgery that uses extreme cold to kill diseased tissue.

There are 15 million women in the United States suffering from benign breast lumps. Every year one million women are sliced open on the operating table in expensive surgery to remove breast lumps.

“Half the medical world is dealing with removing these [lumps],” says Didier Toubia, CEO of the Yokneam-based company. “At present there are no non-invasive treatments for benign breast lumps.”

According to Dr Rafi Klein, a senior surgeon specializing in breast surgery at the Ramban Medical Center in Haifa and an advisor for Arbel, the threat of cancer prompts doctors to recommend removing all breast lumps even from young women.

“There is a lot of demand for finding a solution to surgery without causing scars,” he told ISRAEL21c.

IceSense provides that solution by offering the hope of efficient treatment in local clinics without the need for hospitalization, recuperation, or scarring. The IceSense mechanism enables the local application of super-cold temperatures and a fine control of the temperature itself. Liquid nitrogen is pumped to the end of a thin needle probe cooling the tip to the extreme cold required for cryotherapy. Utilizing ultrasound, surgeons can then guide the needle to the exact location of the lump and then freeze the unwanted tissue inside the body.

About the same size as a washing machine, the IceSense apparatus can be operated even in local clinics and medical centers. Providing treatment for breast lumps in local medical centers would be a big step towards the current trend in the US to conduct as much surgery as possible in local clinics by using non-invasive methods. This keeps expensive and over-worked operating rooms and teams free for more serious surgical procedures that require a hospital environment.

An hour-long surgery to remove a breast lump requires a full operating room team, costs about $2,000 and takes up several hours of the patient’s time with pre and post operation procedures. And the scars left behind will last a lifetime. An IceSense treatment will cost less than half that amount, take less than an hour at the clinic, and patients will be able to walk out right after the procedure.

While the theory of cryotreatment has been around for over 30 years, practical restraints have prevented its use for internal medicine. Although widely used today to treat external skin problems such as warts, moles, and cysts, using the same method for internal disorders is problematic. Effective treatment demands temperatures well below freezing point and generating such low temperatures in a way that is also convenient for the tightly controlled environment of invasive surgery is fraught with difficulties.

The most popular method of achieving cryotemperatures, that is temperatures well below freezing point, is by using liquid nitrogen. Nitrogen, the gas that makes up nearly 80% of the air that we breathe, is still viscous at 170 degrees centigrade below zero. This super-cold liquid is used in a variety of applications to provide extreme cooling. However, applying liquid nitrogen to internal tissue without using invasive surgery to cut a clear path to the target is impractical. The storage and handling of liquid nitrogen is awkward, requiring cumbersome vacuum-insulated storage vats and expensive piping to deliver the liquid before it boils into a gas. In addition, most liquid nitrogen systems are designed to supply the liquid at high pressure that is at odds with the delicacy of surgery.

Arbel engineer Alexander Levin explains that building a system to work with surgically small and precise amounts of liquid nitrogen was a challenge. Just keeping the nitrogen as a liquid while it is transferred to the probe required a newly designed siphon, but the real problem was concentrating the nitrogen in the end of the probe without freezing the entire length of the shaft. If the temperature of the shaft became super-cold it would freeze healthy tissue along its length.

“We needed to overcome all of these problems,” Levin recalls.

Levin resolved the difficulties by pulsing the nitrogen instead of using a steady flow. The pulses of just 0.2 grams of nitrogen do not cool the shaft of the probe but when collected in the tip the liquid boils into gas drawing heat from the end of the probe and the surrounding body tissue. The gaseous nitrogen is then drawn off back down the probe. As the temperature at the end of the probe plummets, an ice-ball forms around the tip freezing the surrounding body tissue.

The pulse mechanism enables precise and subtle temperature control at the tip of the probe ensuring the resulting ice-ball freezes only the target tissue. The IceSense pulse system gives surgeons precise control over the size and application of the ice-ball to minimize any collateral damage and target only the intended tissue.

The freezing procedure has several advantages over invasive knife surgery. It is easier to perform and does not require an operating room and team. In addition, the extreme cold acts as a form of anesthetic numbing the patient’s sensations in the area around the probe and reducing the need for chemical anesthetics.

Recuperation from cryosurgery is also healthier for the patient. The sudden surgical plundering of diseased tissue is traumatic for the body, but with cryotherapy the frozen tissue remains in place and is then dissolved out of the body by the immune system.

This natural method of disposal has an added bonus; regular knife surgery to remove cancerous tissue is always likely to leave behind some cancerous cells that escape the surgeon’s efforts. The remaining cells can spawn a return of the cancer in the same location. However, the dead tissue left behind after cryosurgery triggers a vigorous immune reaction. This heightened immune response has proved effective in killing off lingering cancerous tissue and may safe-guard against a resurgence of the disease.

According to Klein the procedure is similar to a needle biopsy. Although at first only a qualified general surgeon will be authorized to use IceSense, Klein predicts the procedure may follow the course of needle biopsies that were at first performed only by surgeons, but today are conducted by x-ray technicians as well. Once a surgeon has approved the procedure, an x-ray technician would be authorized to remove the lump.

Klein says that the benefits to the patient of non-invasive surgery outweigh the disadvantages to surgeons who tend to prefer a more tactile approach to surgery.

“Surgeons are like children – they like to feel things in their hands,” he says. “At first if feels like you are missing something but we are doctors and if you can do something that the patient feels better with and leaves no scars you feel better about it because it is better for the patient.”

At present Arbel intends to focus on benign breast lumps before expanding the technology for use to treat breast cancer as well. Benign lumps are easier to treat and the paperwork required to perform the procedures is easier. Toubia will begin trials on patients at the end of the year in Israel and intends to apply for FDA clearance to start clinical trials in the US by spring next year.

“It is an attractive business venture,” says Toubia who hopes to capture some 40% of the $500 million breast-lump market after IceSense becomes available to the public in 2009.

Toubia envisions breast cancer clinics using IceSense to treat women in a simple and quick procedure that only requires a local anesthetic. If successful IceSense will increase the number of women that can be treated on a daily basis as well as alleviate the difficult dilemma that many young women face when diagnosed with a breast lump.

“The whole decision as to whether or not to take out a lump will be made much easier,” Klein says. “Today women have to consider if they want to have surgery whereas like this it is much easier to do and more young women will choose to do it.”

By Nicky Blackburn, www.Israel21c.com

For Prof. Beka Solomon it was obvious. If it isn’t possible to send drugs to the brain to treat Alzheimer’s disease the normal way because of the blood-brain barrier that prevents drugs from moving from the blood stream into the brain, then send them through the nose instead.

Solomon, of the Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology Department at Tel Aviv University, has been working in this field for the last 13 years after years of research in immunotherapy, and found in mouse trials that filamentous phages, a harmless bacterial virus found almost everywhere from the depths of the ocean to the lining of the stomach, can be an effective treatment against Alzheimer’s disease when carried to the brain through the nose.

Alzheimer’s is a debilitating disease that leads to progressive loss of memory and cognitive functions, and a great deal of suffering for both the person afflicted and their loved ones. In the U.S. alone, there are now more than five million people living with Alzheimer’s, but there is currently no drug on the market that can cure or effectively stop the progression of this disease.

The cause of this disease and other neurological diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is widely concluded to be plaque formation, which causes inflammation in the brain. Up to now, scientists working on a cure for the disease have focused on dissolving and preventing plaque formation, but most have come up against two problems: firstly, the difficulty in developing drugs that pass through the highly selective blood-brain barrier; and secondly, unwanted side-effects of inflammation and hemorrhaging.

In her research, Solomon shows that by administering non-lytic filamentous phages in small doses through the nasal passages, the phages have a direct and rapid route to the brain. There they lock onto the extracellular plaques associated with Alzheimer’s and dissolve them, reducing inflammation in the brain without any side effects. The body then gets rid of the waste naturally.

“The filamentous phages have a nanotubular appearance which is very similar in shape to amyloid fibrils, the main component of amyloid plaque, which is the plaque linked to Alzheimer’s,” explains Solomon, who recently presented her findings at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Canada.

Solomon first began thinking about sending phages through the nasal passages because the plaque that causes Alzheimer’s first appears in the olfactory bulb. As a result, one of the early symptoms of this devastating disease is loss of smell.

To test her hypothesis, Solomon and her colleagues treated 150 mice with the phage intranasally for 12 months. They found the mice that had exhibited the symptoms of Alzheimer’s regained their sense of smell and also showed memory and cognitive improvement. After one year of treatment, they had 80 percent fewer plaques than untreated mice.

The phages were eliminated from the brain and secreted from the body in urine and feces. The researchers saw no adverse effects in the peripheral organs — the kidneys, liver, lungs, and spleen biology were all normal.

“The mice showed very nice recovery of their cognitive function,” says Solomon, who emigrated with her family from Romania to Israel about 40 years ago. “We saw a reduction in the amyloid plaque and a reduction in brain inflammation. Afterward the phages were eliminated naturally from the body through the kidneys without any adverse side-effects.”

“This is a potential breakthrough, but it needs to be proved further,” Solomon told ISRAEL21c. “Bateriophages are one of the most numerous life forms on earth and mammalian organisms are very frequently exposed to interactions with them. We know for instance that they are a very important part of the natural flora of the gut and research groups all over the world have developed classic phage therapy as an alternative to antibiotics. We are used to living with them, it’s not unusual, but to take them to the brain in unusual. This is the first attempt to use phages as a treatment for Alzheimer’s.”

Ramot, the commercial arm of Tel Aviv University is now planning to commercialize Solomon’s research and has licensed the technology to a startup company.

“Beka is a real pioneer in developing an immunotherapeutic approach for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease,” says Irit Ben-Chlouch, director of business development, life sciences at Ramot. “She was the first to show the disease can be treated using antibodies and, as the main focus of her lab, has developed several different breakthrough approaches.”

In the meantime, Solomon plans to continue with her research, which she regards as a platform technology. She and fellow researchers at the university are now exploring whether this intranasal administration of filamentous phages can also be used to help patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease and Huntingdon’s disease.

She is also exploring the possibility of adding medicines, such as anti-inflammation agents to the phages, to bring the brain additional therapeutic medicines.