Julien Lerisson, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Delegation in Israel, visited Magen David Adom’s Marcus National Blood Services Center in Ramla where he toured the milk bank, the emergency dispatch center, and MDA’s fleet of emergency vehicles, all while experiencing live missile sirens firsthand. The Marcus Center is the nerve center of Israel’s blood supply infrastructure, responsible for roughly 95% of the nation’s total blood supply and home to the Sussman Family National Human Milk Bank.
MDA Chief of Staff Uri Shacham led the tour, beginning with a walkthrough of milk bank, where Lerisson saw firsthand how donated breast milk serves as a lifeline for premature and medically fragile newborns. Donor milk can mean the difference between life and death when a mother is unable to breastfeed. Operated jointly by MDA and the Israeli Ministry of Health, the bank supplies carefully screened, high-quality donor breastmilk to hospitals across Israel, with distribution prioritized according to each infant’s medical needs. The ongoing war has deepened the milk bank’s mission, as some infants cannot receive their own mothers’ milk because those mothers are serving in the IDF reserves, have been injured, or even killed.
Lerisson sat down with milk bank director Dr. Sharron Bransburg-Zabary, who outlined the bank’s daily operations, the facility’s role in neonatal care nationwide, and opportunities for future cooperation, including the potential use of donor milk as humanitarian aid.
Lerisson then went to MDA’s emergency dispatch center, where MDA Director-General Eli Bin outlined the center’s sophisticated systems and its role in coordinating emergency response across Israel.
The tour took an unplanned turn when two missile sirens forced the group to take shelter within the dispatch center’s protected area. From there, Lerisson observed MDA’s technology in action, observing how emergency calls are received, incidents are mapped, and missile impact locations are predicted and monitored on the center’s screens in real time.
Once Israeli Home Front Command cleared the group to leave the sheltered space, Lerisson toured a range of MDA’s specialized vehicles: bloodmobiles used to conduct blood at donation drives, rapid response units, and a Mobile Intensive Care Unit bus which was purpose-built for mass casualty events and outfitted with advanced life-support equipment. Another siren interrupted this portion of the tour, sending the group back to shelter.
The visit wrapped up with a gesture of solidarity as Lerisson rolled up his sleeves to donate blood, contributing personally to Israel’s national blood supply.
