Thank you to the Jewish United Fund of Chicago for their generous support towards the purchase of critical equipment in Galilee Medical Center’s treatment of Syrian children who are casualties of the ongoing Syrian conflict. The IDF and the GMC have determined that it is necessary to set up a separate and dedicated space for a Children’s Clinic for Syrian children, held every Tuesday. Up to 50 child casualties are brought to the Clinic each week by the IDF as their point of entry to the GMC, and are treated for their injuries. For most of the children, this is the beginning of a long treatment regimen requiring multiple surgeries and long hospital stays.

The Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) device is used for hearing screening, auditory threshold estimation, intra-operative monitoring, determining hearing loss type and degree, and auditory nerve and brainstem lesion detection, and in development of cochlear implants, among other functions. Because of the preponderance of head and neck injuries among the Syrian casualties, including among the children, it is necessary to use the ABR device to measure patients brain function, hearing, as well these other essential factors.

However, because the Syrian patients are sequestered and isolated from the rest of the GMC patient populations due to issues and their safety and general security as noted above, the Syrian children treated at the clinic do not have access to the ABR device in the GMC surgical complex. It is therefore necessary for the Syrian Children’s Clinic to be equipped with a mobile ABR device to enable the medical and surgical teams treating the Syrian children to meet their patient’s needs more completely and achieve the most effective treatment results.

The Galilee Medical Center has treated more than 1,500 severely wounded victims of the Syrian conflict, many of them children. The most serious of the injured can receive continual treatment for months on end, with multiple surgeries and long term care.

Thank you to the Jewish United Fund of Chicago for their generous support to help the hospital effectively compete its mission project for the benefit and security of the Syrian casualties and ultimately for the well-being of the population of the Western Galilee.

Click below to make a donation to support the treatment of Syrian children.