Hatzoloh makes inroads in Montreal

By DAVID LAZARUS
Staff Reporter

There’s the case of a toddler brought back to life after nearly strangling on a venetian blind, a man revived after a heart attack, or the woman fainting in shul.

After countless saved lives, endless hard work and seven years spent fighting for respectability, Hatzoloh, the Jewish community’s volunteer emergency medical response service (EMS), appears to finally be getting the measure of respect it has always deserved.

Police who once did not know about Hatzoloh now work hand-in-hand with the organization.

So do technicians from Urgence-Santé, the only emergency service with the legal right to transport patients to hospitals.

While at one time, some within Urgence-Santé saw Hatzoloh as a threat to their jobs or simply as amateurs, now it is a Hatzoloh crew Urgence-Santé technicians hope to see on the scene when they arrive.

Just a year ago, Hatzoloh (Hebrew for rescue) opened up its first permanent centre on Ekers Avenue close to the heart of Montreal’s Orthodox community. The service has 45 highly trained volunteers who respond at a moment’s notice, seven full-time dispatchers, and the most cutting-edge medical support and technological equipment.

“Things have changed,” said Meyer Salzberg, a member of Hatzoloh’s central committee.

Joined by several other Hatzoloh officials, one of the main points Salzberg underscored during a recent interview was that to this day, many in the Jewish community still do not know much about Hatzoloh. That’s something it wanted to change.

“We’re coming out of the closet,” said Reuben Feldman, Hatzoloh’s director of public relations.

Although it operated briefly in Montreal about 20 years ago – it has been operating in the United States for almost 35 years – the all-volunteer organization was re-launched here in 1997.

Hatzoloh is primarily a first-response service. A trained and fully equipped crew of two arrive by car at a site, invariably within a minute or two after being sent there by one of its dispatchers. The average response time for Urgence-Santé is nine minutes.

Once there, the Hatzoloh team will treat anything from a splinter to a heart attack. Its main role is to assess, stabilize and treat the patient until the ambulance arrives.

In all serious cases, 9-1-1 is called at the same time as Hatzoloh responds. It is also called in less serious cases that may require transfer to the hospital.

Hatzoloh technicians, who receive the same training as their Urgence-Santé counterparts, are allowed to use cardiac defibrillators that can restore a heartbeat in cases of cardiac arrest.

They cannot transport patients to hospital, administer some medications or perform certain intubations.

“It’s very simple: what we do is bridge the gap until Urgence-Santé gets there,” Salzberg said.

According to Arie Rangott, Hatzoloh’s director of operations, the organization is, before anything else, a community-based service.

Many, if not most of its clientele, are Jews, a high proportion of whom are Orthodox, who live within Hatzoloh’s jurisdiction of St. Lawrence Boulevard to the east, Cote St. Luc to the west, Jean-Talon to the north and Snowdon to the south.

Hatzoloh is finely attuned to their particular needs, and Rangott said it is often summoned in minor cases instead of 9-1-1 because of the naturally higher comfort level.

“There is no built-in fear of authority that sometimes exists,” he said.

Not every call involves a Jewish patient, however. “We got a call from a passerby on the street about an accident, and the people in the car weren’t Jewish,” Rangott said. “It made no difference.”

During the summer, Hatzoloh works with the regional medical director in the Laurentians, where many religious Jews spend their summers. It also has its own bicycle helmet, fire and school safety programs, and hopes to launch a program in all Jewish schools for teachers to learn CPR.

Dov Wolman, also a Hatzoloh member, said the organization has won the “confidence, trust and respect of municipal and provincial authorities because of its track record, but there remains work to be done.”

Hatzoloh depends on private fund-raising – primarily synagogue appeals and a women’s Shavuot Chinese Auction – for its annual $400,000 in expenses.

“What we want is to be recognized, somehow, as a first-response unit, without having to dial 9-1-1,” Rangott said.

During the interview, a two-way radio buzzed, and within seconds the situation was handled.

For more information on Hatzoloh, call 344-2850.

Hatzoloh members asked that its emergency number not be revealed in this article, out of concern that they would be inundated with calls.