A pair of United Hatzalah EMT volunteers last Thursday ended up providing babysitting services to a 3-month-old infant whose mother was off to hospital with her other child.
The two EMT volunteers, Shaul Samber and Raffi Ben David, were dispatched to an emergency in Kiryat Yearim involving a two-year-old who had suffered a head wound from a heavy object that fell on his face.
The volunteers, who were nearby, arrived less than a minute after receiving the emergency alert and treated the boy for his injuries, applying bandages, stopping the bleeding, and comforting the terrified boy and his mother. But when the ambulance arrived and the boy, prepared for transport to hospital accompanied by his mother, it turned out there was another child in the house, a three-month-old infant, and no one to watch him.
So Ben David and Samber offered to stay with the infant, and, both being young fathers, they placed him in a car seat in the back of Ben David’s vehicle. They drove the baby to the hospital and waited with him until his father arrived. They fed the baby and cared for him while the mother was dealing with her injured child.
“I saw that the mother was distraught and feeling helpless. On the one hand, she needed to take care of her older son, but on the other, she wasn’t able to take the infant to the hospital and care for it properly there. Without hesitating, I told her that Shaul and I would watch the infant and bring him to the hospital until her husband could arrive. I saw how relieved she was when I said that. She thanked us profusely for our medical assistance and treatment as well as for watching her younger son. As a parent, I know how difficult the situation she was in and it was a very quick and easy decision for me to offer my help,” Ben David reported.
President and Founder of United Hatzalah Eli Beer said: “It’s acts like this that show the true level of caring that our volunteers have for the people in their community. We are proud to have volunteers such as Raffi and others like him, who show just how much they care for the people they help on a daily basis, all across the country.”