Underground and overground: medicine in Haifa
Hillel GoldbergNov 16, 2017Columns, Opinion, View from Denver0
medicine. It’s not what you might think it is. Not experimental drugs with outsized promise and undersized evidence. Not far-out therapies for people sick enough, desperate enough, to try anything. Nope. It’s underground. Literally. Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, has built what may be the largest underground hospital in the world. Dr. Rafael Beyar, director and CEO, learned the hard way. In the Second Lebanon War, 2006, Hezbollah rockets rained down on northern Israel, whose medical capital is Haifa. It was next to impossible to treat the wounded and dodge the rockets. The answer? An underground hospital. Fully equipped. Doubling, no less, as a parking lot. This three-floor underground parking garage can be converted into a fully equipped, two-floor hospital in 48 hours. It […]