Sheba Medical Center's Disaster Medicine Team First on Scene In Zambia Cholera Outbreak

Sheba Medical Center's Israel Center for Disaster Medicine was the first international team to respond to the urgent call for assistance for the outbreak of cholera in Lusaka, Zambia. The Humanitarian Response Team sent a team of doctors, nurses and lab technicians. Led by Professor Elhanan Bar-On and Professor Eli Schwartz, Director of the hospital's Tropical Disease Unit, the team will stay in Zambia for two weeks to help stem the outbreak.

"A team of 8 people from Sheba, treated over 100 patients a day at Lusaka's national soccer stadium, which was transformed into a field hospital," revealed Professor Schwartz.

 As a Western nation, cholera is unheard of in Israel, however Sheba Medical Center is committed to sharing their medical excellence wherever the need should be found. Many of the life saving trauma and emergency medicine techniques developed in Israel through necessity, have applications to a wide reaching number of situations.

"We brought modern laboratory equipment and enough medications and fluids to treat the current outbreak, where 2 out of every 100 people were dying,” Professor Schwartz explained. “Cholera can easily be treated with fluids and antibiotics. But it’s up to the government of Zambia to upgrade their drainage and sewage systems. In order to stem the spread of the disease, the government was forced to shut down schools, malls and even churches."

The Israel Center for Disaster Medicine and Humanitarian Response at Sheba Medical Center was created in 2017 to streamline disaster response. The Center offers comprehensive programs for teaching and training of medical teams and incident managers in emergency situations, including natural disasters and mass casualty incidents.  Faculty includes experts from Sheba as well as Israeli national experts from various Israeli government ministries and agencies, the military, EMS organizations and independent experts in these fields

A key component to the program is a preliminary assessment by the Sheba team of the local medical and emergency management system as well as culture. In the case of this mission to Zambia Prof. Bar-On made a preliminary visit to see how the Sheba team could best aid their Zambian counterparts, including meeting with the local authorities.

Sheba’s Director General, Dr. Yitzhak Kreiss, announced that the Rescue Team was on the ground for two weeks in Zambia, to help as many people as possible.

“The innovative medical expertise and tactics employed by our experts are today being dedicated to helping the people of Zambia and saving as many lives as possible from the tragic cholera outbreak,” Kreiss said. “Sheba Medical Center’s goal, which echoes the ethos of Israel, is to save lives and make a positive global impact.”