Just after 10:00 p.m. on Saturday night in the quiet Haifa suburb of Kiryat Yam, a man in his late 50s suffered a cardiac arrest in his home on A.D. Gordon Street. Worried family members called emergency services for help. United Hatzalah’s Dispatch and Command Center identified Uriyah Mizrachi and Moshe Dov Cohen as two of the closest emergency responders to the incident.
Uriyah was at home hanging laundry when he received the alert to the emergency a few blocks away from his house. He rushed outside, jumped on his ambucycle, and raced over to the address. He arrived at the address in less than three minutes together with another volunteer EMT who lived even closer than he did and the two rushed inside together. They found the man lying on his living room floor without a pulse and not breathing.
Uriyah attached a defibrillator and the pair initiated CPR alternating performing compressions and providing assisted ventilation. Moshe Cohen arrived a moment later and the team maintained their CPR efforts for the next ten minutes until a mobile intensive care ambulance arrived at the scene. When the paramedic from the ICU ambulance attached the heart monitor they found that the man’s pulse had returned thanks to the CPR efforts of the EMTs.
They prepared the man for transport. Just 15 minutes after the emergency call was made the man was on the way to the hospital to receive additional medical care with a viable pulse and a good heart rate.
“It was terrific to be a part of the team that helped this man,” Uriyah said. “While I don’t know what the final outcome will be, by initiating medical treatment as fast as we did and performing a successful CPR on the man, we gave him the best chance of life and with God’s help, he will make a full recovery. That will be truly special. He is still a young man and if he makes a full recovery he will hopefully have a long life ahead of him and I am thankful for that.”
To support the lifesaving work of United Hatzalah volunteers like Uriyah, please click here: