IDF only military in the world currently performing procedure pioneered by US army; while no proof yet to declare it a panacea, fight against Hezbollah may prove its worth.
In the Second Lebanon War, 14.9 percent of wounded IDF soldiers died from their injuries. In Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the percentage decreased to 9.4%. In the current war, only around 7% of those wounded in battle have died.
The IDF Medical Corps and physicians who treat the war-wounded in Israel’s hospitals cite several reasons for the historically low case fatality rate — the ratio of injured who survive to the number of injured who die.
Among those reasons is the rapid evacuation time by helicopter, which on average get the injured to a hospital trauma room in just over an hour. Also noted is the high number of senior-level medical personnel, including physicians and paramedics, on the battlefield. Each company has a medical professional in the field with it, who reaches a wounded soldier within five to seven minutes.
The final factor is the military’s decision to give whole blood transfusions on the battlefield for the first time. This is possible because qualified medical personnel are right there to do it.
“This is something happening only in the Israeli military and it’s an amazing game changer,” said Col. Zivan Aviad-Beer, chief medical officer of the IDF Southern Command, speaking to the Hebrew-language Haaretz in December.
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