News

Calgary donates transport incubator to MDA

August 26, 2009

By Rachel Barsky

CALGARY — Members of the Switzer Family Foundation and Calgary Friends of Magen David Adom gathered at the Switzer’s Elbow River Casino Restaurant in Calgary recently.

Members of the Switzer Family Foundation with some of the MDA
Calgary team; from left, Helmi Switzer and Merrena Thompson, members of
the board of directors of the Sam & Betty Switzer Foundation; Fanny
Wedro, vice-president, and Dr. James Cohen, co-president, Calgary
Friends of MDA; Sam Switzer, president of the Sam & Betty Switzer
Foundation; Samuel Wainer, co-president, Nava Wainer, vice-president
& Toby Friedman, secretary-treasurer, Calgary Friends of MDA;
Carolyn Reu, secretary, The Sam & Betty Switzer Foundation.
[Ron Switzer photo]

CALGARY —
Members of the Switzer Family Foundation and Calgary Friends of Magen
David Adom gathered at the Switzer’s Elbow River Casino Restaurant in
Calgary recently.

The Aug. 14 meeting marked the donation of $50,000 from Sam Switzer and his family to Calgary’s Magen David Adom (MDA) chapter for the purchase of a transport incubator, which will help save the lives of Israeli children.

This is not the first gift Calgary Friends of MDA has sent to Israel — the Calgary chapter began fundraising in 2006, during the Second Lebanon War.

Nava Wainer, a Calgarian originally from Israel, visited her friend Fanny Wedro and Wedro’s husband, the late Leo Wedro, during the war. The three couldn’t take their eyes off TV news reports, in which Israelis were running from a fire and MDA ambulances were driving into the flames. Wainer knew she had to do something to help the Jewish state.

“Maybe we should raise money for an ambulance,” she said.

“How will we do that?” Fanny wondered.

Leo answered, “What a woman can do, a division of soldiers can’t accomplish.”

So Wainer, Fanny Wedro and their friend Debbie Halpern established Calgary Friends of MDA. Wainer’s husband, Samuel, and Dr. James Cohen became co-presidents, and the group, which also includes several board members, began raising funds for a mobile intensive care unit ambulance for Israel.

The ambulance cost $105,000, with additional funds necessary for equipment, supplies and spare parts, which must be replenished and maintained. Wedro says that it didn’t take long to raise the money. “People were very eager to help. The Calgary community was wonderful.”

Dr. Warren Bean, who now lives in Toronto, mobilized doctors from Calgary hospitals to contribute funds. Jews and non-Jews donated to the project, along with the Switzer Family Foundation. The Switzers “saw how great the cause was,” says Wainer.

In less than three months, the ambulance, which was built in Quebec and was one of eight ambulances sent by Canadian MDA, was flown to Israel.

MDA was established in Tel Aviv in 1930. Israel’s only national first-aid society, it maintains ambulance and blood services, and conducts training in first aid and pre-emergency medicine, including volunteer training.

Calgary MDA receives notice of what equipment is most urgently needed from Arnold Rosner, national executive director of CMDA in Montreal, who gets this information from Yoni Yagadofsky, international liaison for MDA Israel.

After raising money for the transport incubator, Calgary’s next project was to raise funds for First Aid Emergency Scooters. The scooters cost $25,000 each. Darlene Switzer-Foster was one of the first in Canada to donate a scooter.

These three-wheeled scooter ambulances weave in and out of Israel’s crammed, narrow streets, and can reach people faster than a larger ambulance can, says Sam Wainer The scooters carry paramedics who help patients until a larger ambulance arrives.

Wainer spoke about Israel’s excellent medical care from personal experience. In February 2009, he was stuck in a heavy traffic jam in Israel. The weather was abnormally hot and a number of people fainted, including Switzer. In less than three minutes, an ambulance came.

Wainer was taken to a hospital immediately, where he had an electrocardiogram and other tests without waiting. “They gave me the best of care,” he says.

Israel’s ambulance system is efficient despite the fact that the majority of MDA workers are volunteers. “There are about 1,200 paid MDA employees and the rest, about 14,000, are volunteers,” says Wedro.

In Canada, there are about a half-dozen paid CMDA employees who work in the Montreal headquarters and in the Toronto office. Everyone who works in the other CMDA offices, in London, Hamilton, Ottawa, Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Regina, Victoria and Calgary, is a volunteer.

The Calgary MDA chapter recently raised nearly $50,000 in the Calgary community toward a second incubator. “By next month, we’ll have $50,000,” says Wainer. The group also constantly fundraises for maintenance of existing equipment and for the training of Israeli medical staff.

As well, Calgary MDA holds educational sessions open to the public, with speakers such as stem-cell expert Dr. Samuel Weiss. Harvey Rabin, an infectious diseases doctor, will be the chapter’s next speaker for an event it hopes to hold this fall.

Calgary MDA spreads the word about MDA as much as possible, even appearing on radio programs such as High River’s 1140 AM show Gospel Road.

Cohen, Calgary’s MDA’s co-president, and his son, Laurence, recently made a 10-minute documentary called Life in the Day of Magen David Adom, which followed the Calgary-Switzer ambulance in Israel. The film was screened in Calgary in May.

While filming, Laurence talked to the oldest paramedic in MDA. “He’s 57 years old, and he has a book of newspaper clippings that his son made him about the lives he’s saved over the years,” Laurence says.

For more information about Canadian Magen David Adom, call 1-800-731-2848 or visit http://www.cmdai.org/.