Posted on 12/27/23
| News Source: FOX45
Baltimore, MD - Dec. 27, 2023 - It’s quite possible he’s treated you, a family member, or a friend in the emergency room at Greater Baltimore Medical Center (GBMC).
But for the first half of November, Dr. Dov Frankel was roughly 6,000 miles away treating trauma patients in Israel.
“I think everyone has a moment in their life where all their worlds come together,” Frankel said. “And so I’m fluent in Hebrew. I practiced in Israel, so I know the Israeli medical system, and I do emergency and trauma medicine.”
Frankel told FOX45 News he left behind his wife, five children, and five grandchildren in the U.S. when he boarded a plane in the weeks after the Hamas terrorist attack.
The emergency medicine physician volunteered through the Emergency Volunteers Project for two weeks at the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, Israel.
“We only saw the patients that came out of Gaza,” Frankel said. “We were 10 kilometers away from Gaza and we treated soldiers and Palestinians. Those are the only people we treated.”
He described what it was like working in the midst of a war.
“The first day was a little bit scary because, you know, it’s a constant boom you hear,” Frankel said. “Its like July 4th nonstop.”
Photos from what Frankel called his “two weeks in the foxhole” provide just a small glimpse of what his trauma shifts looked like.
He told FOX45 News the hospital’s trauma bay is located inside a bomb shelter below ground.
“Day one, I treated my first soldier and I walk into a trauma room with Arab physicians, Russian Physicians, Israeli physicians altogether – but we all spoke the common language of trauma,” he said.
But treating patients from a warzone was a stark contrast to the patients Frankel treats in Baltimore.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” Frankel said. “In my life I’ve never seen shrapnel injuries ... I’ve never seen an RPG rocket or anti-missile rocket hit a person or hit a building and then hit a person.”
He said his two weeks in Ashkelon taught him new skills.
“I learned a lot about shrapnel injury and I feel very proficient now in shrapnel injury, unfortunately,” he said.
As the Israel-Hamas war continues, Frankel says he would return to the region and treat more patients in a heartbeat.
“I have a bag packed,” he said. “I’m ready.”