The head of Israel’s second largest emergency medical service, United Hatzalah, is Eli Beer. On a recent fundraising trip in America, Beer contracted COVID-19 and was immediately hospitalized and intubated in a Miami hospital for three weeks. Israelis and Jews around the world have been praying for his swift recovery. It appears their prayers were answered.

Beer, President of United Hatzalah, is now awake, breathing on his own and has spoken with his family in Israel for the first time. The organization’s chairman, Mark Gerson, released this statement to the Jerusalem Post:

“It is with great joy that we can announce that Eli is awake, off the ventilator, and breathing on his own.”

“Thank you to all those who prayed and did acts of kindness in his merit. He has a long recovery ahead, and we ask everyone to give him and his family time before contacting them. We will continue to share updates on Eli’s progress as well as ways to send him well wishes.”

This is great news for one of Israel’s most loved private sector business leaders. 

United Hatzalah of Israel is the largest independent, non-profit, fully volunteer Emergency Medical Service organization that provides the fastest and free emergency medical first response throughout Israel. 

United Hatzalah has more than 6,000 volunteers around the country, available around the clock – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. 

With the help of their unique GPS technology and iconic ‘ambucycles‘, their average response time is less than 3 minutes across the country and 90 seconds in metropolitan areas. UH’s mission is to arrive at the scene of medical emergencies as soon as possible and provide the patient with professional and appropriate medical aid until an ambulance arrives, resulting in many more lives saved.

Outside of Israel, United Hatzalah was actively involved in providing rescue assistance when disaster hit in two different mass casualty incidents: the Gorkha earthquake in Nepal, which killed nearly 9,000 people and injured nearly 22,000 (April 2015), and Hurricane Matthew in Haiti, which was extremely destructive and resulted in an estimated 1,100 deaths (September 2016).

In both incidents, the United Hatzalah delegation of volunteer emergency medical specialists departed from Israel for a deployment to the hardest hit villages and cities and operated on some of the roughest terrain under the most trying conditions. The United Hatzalah volunteers had the best medical equipment, protective gear, and communication equipment possible under the circumstances and gave their time, energy, and medical assistance to anyone in need.