Top Israeli trauma surgeon to help local ER teams prepare for the unthinkable

Are crisis teams in New Orleans prepared for the unthinkable? Would area hospitals be ready if there were a Boston-style bombing during one of the many crowd-packed celebrations in the Crescent City?

One of world"s top trauma surgeons will be on campus next month to share how Israeli emergency teams developed life-saving emergency response techniques to treat critical injuries from terrorist bombings and other deadly disasters.

Dr. Avraham Rivkind, who leads the department of general surgery and trauma unit of Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, will be presenting “Lessons from Disaster” at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 4, in the Kendall Cram room of the Lavin-Bernick Center for University Life. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will focus on what doctors in Israel learned about effectively responding to blast wounds and severe injuries from suicide bombings, rocket attacks and shootings during the second Palestinian intifada in the early 2000s.

The lecture is one of the few public sessions during the New Orleans/Israel Partnership on Emergency Response and Medicine, a five-day conference starting Dec. 2 that will bring together crisis management experts and emergency medical responders from New Orleans and Israel to share best practices and lessons learned in disaster response. Medical professionals from both countries will meet to hold workshops, hospital site visits and panels on topics such as operational readiness, hospital evacuation, temporary medical facilities, pandemics, terrorist response and hazmat containment.

The conference is sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, Tulane University School of Medicine, Jones Walker LLP, Acadian Ambulance Service, Ochsner Health System, Touro Infirmary, Children"s Hospital and Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.

More information, including registration information, is available at www.niperm.org.