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IDF Offers Humanitarian Aide to Typhoon Stricken Philippines

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Assembled at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, IDF forces on their way to provide aide to typhoon victims in the Philippines
Assembled at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, IDF forces on their way to provide aide to typhoon victims in the Philippines
Israel is now part of the international disaster relief effort in the Philippines, since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon sent a relief mission to the area last Wednesday, which was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan. The Category 5 super-storm ravaged six central Philippine islands on November 8, 2013, has been estimated to have killed up to 10,000 people and has left hundreds of thousands wounded or missing.

The 148-person mission, headed by the Israeli Defense Forces, includes Homefront Command officials, military search and rescue experts and Medical Corps personnel, as well as civilian volunteers, medical supplies and equipment purchased by the Israeli relief organization IsraAID.

“The Israeli mission will include a field hospital, medical personnel, equipment and water desalination technology, with the aim of offering those in need the best possible help,” the IDF said in a released statement.

The IDF also said that an advanced medical facility will be built in the city of Bogo, on Cebu island, which was all but leveled by the typhoon. Bogo is where the Israel Defense Forces set up their field hospital, and began treating those in need.

“While headlines have mostly focused on chaos in and around Tacloban City, the typhoon also left a trail of violent destruction on Cebu Island, where the most basic of necessities are lacking,” reads a statement on the Israeli Diplomatic Network’s Consulate General of Israel to the Midwest website, explaining the choice of Bogo as the field hospital location. “Provincial officials say as many as 90 percent of buildings on the north of Cebu were badly damaged by winds and rain, which also flattened crops, downed power lines and blocked roads.”

The IDF worked with officials to determine the most efficient ways to aid Cebu residents so they can return to a normal life as fast as possible, Israel National News reported.

In a special report, NBC reporter Nancy Snyderman remarked that Bogo was “the place we least expected,” the IDF to focus relief efforts towards as the city did not receive the widespread media attention given to other Philippine areas impacted by the typhoon.

For this reason, Snyderman said she was “blown away” by the IDF’s choice of Bogo. She explained that Bogo was not only remote but also poverty-stricken before the typhoon; the IDF delegation is not only attempting to help in the aftermath of the crisis, but also to enact long-term change in one of the Philippine’s poorest urban centers.

Snyderman then praised the IDF’s medical technology, and security, saying at the conclusion of her report that, “As I left, I walked away in awe of this group of doctors: physician humanitarians, and medicine at its very best.”

The IDF has named this “Operation Islands of Hope,” according to the Jewish Press. The field hospital is now equipped with 100 tons of humanitarian and medical supplies from Israel.

Since the mission arrived in the Philippines last Thursday, the Jewish Press has reported that Israeli army medics have already treated at least 370 injured people, of which 150 are children.

Israeli doctors have delivered five babies, including one by Caesarean section. And the AP has reported that Israeli doctors are now trying to restore a 70-year-old man’s eyesight after a nail struck him in the eye during the storm. This will be the first ophthalmologic case for the Israeli team.

The Israeli team is one of 11 foreign medical groups that have set up operations in the Philippines.

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