On Saturday night, a man in his mid-70s choked on bread that he was eating for dinner at his home on Nachal Lakish Street in Ashdod. After witnessing the incident, worried family members called medical services for help.

Yehuda Akrish, a United Hatzalah volunteer EMT, happened to be nearby the incident when his proximity alert went off alerting him to the emergency. Yehuda was with his cousin who is also an EMT, and the pair headed out together on their ambucycles arriving together at the scene.

Yehuda and his cousin entered the family’s home and found the choking man’s son providing him with chest compressions. The man was semi-conscious and unresponsive and was breathing irregularly. They checked the man’s oxygen saturation level and suctioned the patient’s mouth in order to remove the fluids that had gathered and open the man’s airway allowing him to breathe while keeping watch on his vital signs to make sure that they were stable.

As Yehuda and his cousin treated the patient a mobile intensive care ambulance arrived. The combined team provided the man with assisted ventilation using a bag valve mask and provided him with oxygen. Additional responders arrived, and once the man was stabilized, the man was transferred onto a stretcher and into the ambulance team.

The patient was taken to Assuta hospital in Ashdod where he received continuing medical care, but he was alive.

Yehuda recounted after the incident: ‘’Being an EMT is more than just a job or a hobby, it is a mission for me. Helping others is incredibly important and it provides me great satisfaction to see people reunite with their families and come back to life after suffering a medical emergency. Without our intervention, these people would not be reunited. This knowledge always pushes me to continue volunteering and help anyone who is in need of medical assistance.’’

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