Gila Zarbiv had two dreams as a child: to live in Israel and to become a midwife. At 41, she has achieved both, and she’s still not done.
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she immigrated at 20 after a first visit at age eight convinced her she belonged in Israel. She now lives in Jerusalem with her husband Yehonatan and their four children.
Zarbiv has worked as a midwife for over a decade and remains enthusiastic about her work. In recent years, she began volunteering with Magen David Adom as an on-call emergency midwife. “From my experience, I know the risks of childbirth, especially out-of-hospital births. I wanted to contribute my knowledge and professionalism to these situations as well, where women are more stressed when they realize they won’t deliver in a hospital,” she said. “It’s enough to approach the mother and say, ‘Hi, I’m Gila and I’m a midwife,’ and that alone is reassuring.”
MDA recruited hundreds of midwives across Israel as part of the First Contractions project, equipping them to treat pregnant women in emergency situations anywhere. Their details are integrated into MDA’s command and control systems, so when a pregnancy-related emergency call comes in, the system automatically dispatches the nearest midwife to assist paramedics on the ground. Since the start of 2026, MDA teams, including EMTs, paramedics, and the on-call midwives, have treated 6,123 pregnant women, including roughly 590 women who gave birth outside a hospital, delivering 210 boys and 384 girls at home or in an ambulance en route to the hospital.
One of Zarbiv’s emergency calls brought her just a few blocks from her home. When Nitzan Sahar, 26 and in her second pregnancy, went into labor at her Jerusalem home at the start of her eighth month, her husband called MDA’s emergency hotline. “I didn’t think it would happen so fast,” Sahar said. “Minutes that felt like an eternity later, a baby came into the world. MDA’s staff was professional and patient. Gila, the midwife, was amazing and accompanied me through the entire birth.”
After a month in the hospital’s NICU, baby Ayala went home and Zarbiv came to visit. “Nitzan is a powerful example of what women can endure. Giving birth suddenly at home, at a relatively early week, carries real risks. A birth that doesn’t go as planned can be stressful, but it doesn’t have to be traumatic,” emphasized Zarbiv. “That’s where a midwife steps in. Midwives save lives. Every woman deserves a midwife throughout her life. I’m grateful to be part of MDA and this project.”
