“I call on every person to enroll in an MDA first aid course to acquire the basic and important tools that can save another person’s life. That is the difference between life and death.” — Basel Taha, MDA EMT and victim’s son
It was a morning the Taha family will never forget. The children awoke in a panic to the screams of their mother because their father, Adel, 51, lost consciousness and did not respond to her cries. Basel and Manar, both EMTs for Magen David Adom (MDA), immediately jumped out of bed and went into the bedroom to save his life.
“We found our father unconscious and blue,” recalls Basel, a volunteer EMT at the MDA station in Kiryat Ata, outside Haifa. He and his sister, Manar, also a volunteer EMT at the MDA station in Tamra, just north of where her brother works, immediately realized their father’s heart stopped beating, and took control of the situation.
“My sister called an ambulance; my brother ran to a nearby mosque where a defibrillator was placed for the general public [as part of an MDA program to equip public spaces with the devices for emergencies such as this]. We immediately started treatment. After seven electric shocks and 40 minutes of resuscitation, the pulse returned and we breathed a sigh of relief.”
“It was not easy to function in such a case,” adds Manar. “But my brother and I and the MDA team who quickly arrived at the scene managed to save Dad and that is the most important thing. I had a hard time disconnecting my emotions and working, but there was no choice. Thanks to our professional knowledge we saved Dad’s life.”
“A great miracle happened to us, a feeling that could not be described in words,” says Basel. “We knew we were not going to give up and that there was no way anything bad could happen to Dad. A few days later, Dad came home, smiling and unharmed. I call on every person to enroll in an MDA first aid course to acquire the basic and important tools that can save another person’s life. That is the difference between life and death.”
