Introducing Zayid Ahiav – Volunteer Of The Month For October 2021
Zayid Ahiav is a volunteer EMT with United Hatzalah, he lives in the town of Kfar Mazra’a in northern Galilee with his wife and three children and works as an assistant at the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya. Zayid, who is of the Muslim faith, is an incredibly active volunteer and responds to between 50-60 medical emergencies on a monthly basisץ Zayid also volunteers for the traffic police in the northern district. Zayid was selected, via raffle, as the volunteer of the month for the month of October.
Zayid is the first volunteer of the month to have been selected. “I began volunteering a few years ago because I wanted to give back to my community outside of my work hours at the hospital,” Zayid said. “I’ve always been involved in the field of pre-hospital medicine as my father was an ambulance driver for many years and I learned a lot from him.”
Helping people has become a personal philosophy for Zayid. “I’ve always believed that it is better to be on the side of the giver of help, rather than on the side of the recipient. That is a philosophy I grew up with and still adhere to.”
Zayid shared a recent story of a rescue that left him with a new understanding of why it is important to be a volunteer first responder. “A few months ago, a woman in my village called me and urged me to come to her house quickly. Her son had been eating lunch and had choked on his food. No matter what they did they couldn’t get it out. The child was just about a year old. I ran over to her home, just a few streets away from my own. I took the child and began performing the Heimlich maneuver for infants which consists of measured back blows with alternated chest compressions. After a few rounds of administering the Heimlich maneuver, the blockage flew out of his mouth and he began to breathe once more. I was so happy to have been able to save this child’s life. I see him and his family in the streets of our village and they always come over to me and thank me, time and again. This boy is alive because I was here and I knew what to do thanks to my training with United Hatzalah, and that is a great feeling and inspires me.”
When asked how it feels to be nominated as the first winner of the Volunteer of the Month during the Year of the Volunteer campaign Zaiyd said: “We are all one family, all of us United Hatzalah volunteers. We all have the same purpose and the same goal. I am happy to be a member of such a family that is dedicated to lifesaving.”
To support the work of Zayid and see more information about our Year of the Volunteer project, please click here:
