An oasis of healing in Middle East

By SIMON COLLINS

When Charles and Rebecca Sprung told their friends in Miami 12 years ago that they were moving to Jerusalem, they were told they were crazy. Why would anyone want to go and live in a city which, even then, was at the bullseye of one of the most bitterly entrenched conflicts of our time?

Why do they stay now that Charles Sprung, as director of the intensive care unit at Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital, has to care not only for the victims of horrific suicide bombings, but for the suicide bombers too?

"It's not easy for the staff," he said, taking time out in Auckland this week after a fundraising speech for Hadassah. "As physicians and nurses, our responsibility is to take care of the patients, as much as we might detest what the people are doing."

One would-be bomber whose bomb went off before time, merely injuring himself rather than blowing himself and his intended targets to oblivion, was eventually repatriated to Lebanon in exchange for some Israeli soldiers.

"When he was asked about his treatment in an Israeli hospital, he said he was very thankful for the intensive care he got, and he knew he would probably never have got such good care in any of the Arab countries," Sprung says. "But would he do it again? Was he sorry? He was not. It was his job, and one thing had nothing to do with another."

For Charles and Rebecca Sprung, living in Israel is a question of identity and values. "Being an orthodox Jew, going to a place where most people are Jewish was a longstanding desire which I shared with my wife. We got married on condition that we would one day move to Israel if possible."

In fact, it took them 11 years after the birth of their first child before they went to Israel on sabbatical, and a further three years before they moved there permanently.

Born and trained in New York, Charles Sprung taught at the Miami University Medical School from 1978 to 1989. By the late 80s, he was chairing the committees on ethics and public policy of the American Society of Critical Care Medicine.

By 1989, he and Rebecca had four children under 15. But they didn't like the values their youngsters were imbibing.

"Living in Miami it was parties, having fun, going to movies," he says. "In Israel they may belong to youth groups and go to help the elderly in nursing homes.

"I was on sabbatical in the mid-80s at Hadassah in Israel. I lived a dream. My kids were there. I saw the value system was different in terms of how you could contribute to the country."

That dream has been tested, not only by suicide bombers but by the Israeli requirement for all young people to spend two or three years in the military. One of Sprung's sons is serving as a tank commander in the Army. "The first time my son walked in with a gun it was a little strange. He knows how to use it. Hopefully he won't have to ."

Many of the war victims Sprung sees in the hospital are fatally wounded. Just before he left for Australasia, he was caring for a young mother who was wounded by a suicide nail-bomb in August in a pizza shop.

Miraculously, the woman's three-year-old daughter survived. But a nail pierced the woman's heart, and she was admitted to hospital with no pulse and no blood pressure.

"She was resuscitated and spent two or three months in the intensive care unit, and unfortunately she didn't wake up," Sprung says. "Her husband and parents would come and visit every day. But based on the fact that she hasn't made much recovery, the chances of her waking up are close to zero."

Yet there are other cases where life is rescued from what seem to be hopeless injuries. Hearing about them makes it easier to understand why Sprung stays.

Natan Sandaki, for example. An Ethiopian Jew doing his national service aged 18 or 19, he noticed a man dressed as an ultra-orthodox Jew who looked suspicious as he tried to board a bus a few months ago. Sandaki told the bus driver to drive off, and confronted the man.

"He looked in the eyes of this individual and realised that he was a terrorist. The terrorist looked at him," Sprung says.

"He later told me he realised that he was going to let off the bomb. He ran away, and this is what saved his life. But he was still very close and was severely injured - a severe blast injury in the lungs and severe burns.

"That's a very difficult combination to take care of. He developed various problems and was in the unit for a month or two.

"Eventually he woke up and when he was able to talk, he wanted to go back to his unit. Soldiers feel they have let their unit down if they are injured, and they are often keen to get back."

Another young serviceman about the same age, Shimon Ochana, was patrolling in the Jerusalem border settlement of Gilo a year ago when he was hit by a bullet which went straight through his heart and out the other side. As fighting raged around him, it took an ambulance half an hour to reach him, then 15 or 20 minutes to get to the Hadassah Hospital.

"Normally if you go about five minutes without adequate blood flowing to the brain, you typically develop brain damage," Sprung says.

Like the young mother from the pizza shop, Ochana arrived at hospital with no pulse and no blood pressure. Sprung says many hospitals would not even have attempted surgery. But the Hadassah team decided to get him breathing again and operated to repair his heart.

There were "major problems" with both his heart and his lungs. Sprung kept him deliberately sedated and unconscious for several weeks so that he breathed calmly through a respirator. Eventually they weaned him off the respirator and he was able to breathe normally. To the doctors' amazement, he could speak and appeared to have no lasting brain injury.

Sprung describes Hadassah, which also serves as the medical school of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as an "oasis" of peace right on the battlefront between Israelis and Palestinians.

With financial support from Jewish groups around the world, including Auckland, it has become "the centre of excellence in healing, teaching and research in the Middle East".

Although there are hospitals in the towns of Ramallah and Hebron, in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank areas respectively just north and south of Jerusalem, they struggle compared with Hadassah.

"The Palestinians are like a Third World country," Sprung says.

"We are a premier institution. The care you get in our institution, which is one of the best hospitals in the world, is as good as you would get in the States or New Zealand.

"I have a lot of Palestinians who come into intensive care. When they are well enough they can be transferred back to Ramallah or Hebron, but they say, 'We want to stay here. We don't mind paying the extra money."'

At Hadassah, Jewish and Arab Israeli doctors and nurses work together. Charles Sprung believes that "most people want peace, both Palestinians and Israelis".

Despite the political impasse, he is still optimistic, expressing hope that "more reasonable leaders" will eventually replace Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

"There are differences living in a democratic society and a non-democratic, autocratic society. Most of those Palestinian voices have not been heard."

Feature: Middle East

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UN: Information on the Question of Palestine

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Middle East Daily

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Arabic Media Internet Network

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US Department of State - Middle East Peace Process