extricating the child
Israel Seen Exclusive – A Not So Minor Injury
United Hatzalah volunteer Gavriel Bitton was at work when he received an alert from United Hatzalah’s Dispatch and Command Center. According to the alert, a child had suffered a minor injury near Gavriel’s location. The dedicated volunteer EMT immediately dropped what he was doing, rushed out of his workplace, and sped over to the scene on his ambucycle. Gavriel arrived at the location in less than a minute. At the scene, Gavriel saw a lot of concerned pedestrians who were crowding around. They looked somewhat relieved at Gavriel’s quick arrival.
One of the bystanders approached Gavriel and brought him over to where the 8-year-old boy was. He told Gavriel that the young boy had been rollerblading down a slope under a bridge and then skidded and fell into a drainage channel. The boy had tried to stop himself from falling into the hole and his hand caught onto a metal spike. The unfortunate child hung there in terrible pain, desperately hanging onto the edge of the hole with his remaining good hand.
Realizing that although the call from dispatch came in as a minor injury, the boy was suffering from a serious injury, Gavriel alerted dispatch to send a fire rescue team to extricate the boy and an ICU ambulance be sent due to pain protocol. He then grabbed the boy and held his arms around the child to give him more support in order to minimize the little pain that gravity was causing and prevent the impaled hand from sustaining further injury.
Gavriel stayed in this position for twenty minutes until additional forces arrived to help. The ambulance paramedic sedated the child to prevent further pain. The team carefully freed the hand from the metal spike. The child was placed on a stretcher and brought over to the bridge where the ambulance waited to transport the boy to the nearest hospital.
“The rapid intervention I was able to provide was critical to the condition of this young boy’s hand,” said Gavriel. “Helping to lift him up prevented him from feeling more passing and possibly losing consciousness. Thanks to the way United Hatzalah operates I was able to reach the boy in a very short time and begin assistance. Thanks to my having an ambucycle I was able to reach the boy in a location where an ambulance couldn’t reach. If it weren’t for me arriving so quickly the boy could’ve lost his hand or worse. I’m am thankful that I was able to help this boy and save his hand.”
