British trekkers help refurbish ambulance station in world’s largest Bedouin city

A ambulance station in the largest Arab city in Israel has been relefurbished with the help of participants in Magen David Adom’s Jordan trek including Rob Rinder.

With a total of 80,000 residents, Rahat in Israel’s south is also the largest Bedouin city on earth. But when leaders of MDA UK visited the emergency service’s base there four years ago they found facilities that weren’t fit for purpose.

The charity set its sights on improving conditions for the station’s heroic volunteers, including building an extension to host training of paramedics, separate sleeping quarters for men and women and an area to keep oxygen tanks so medics would no longer have to travel to Beer Sheva to retrieve them when needed.

Speaking at the official opening, Suleiman al Atayka, who leads on higher education at the Rahat municipality, said: “This station covers a huge area – all across the Negev region – and the staff who work here feel a huge difference. They say it feels a lot more welcoming and those outside can recognise there’s a huge importance to this station.

“We want to thank the donors and volunteers who work here. When it comes to human life it makes no difference if the patient is a Jew or Arab.” He said he hoped the new facilities would lead to more volunteers coming forward. Attracting more Bedouin women into studying medicine was a goal for the authority, he added.

MDA’s latest trek to Jordan last October raised in excess of £50,000 and saw participants spending time with the head of the Jordanian Red Crescent Mohammed Al-Hadid, who is himself a Bedouin and paved the way for MDA’s inclusion into the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement when he chaired it in 2006. In place of Al-Hadid who wasn’t able to attend the joyous event, MDA UK Vice President Judy Saphra cut the ribbon to formally open the newly refurbished centre.

While the charity’s CEO Daniel Burger said they jumped at the chance to support the project to enhance working conditions, chair Russell Jacobs said “What we didn’t know was that it would also increase the number of volunteers, both men and women, because they felt more comfortable.” The charity also donated an mobile intensive care unit to the Rahat station last year.