THE government of Israel sent a team of medical and lgistics experts last month to assess and help enhance the Philippines’ vaccine operations and deployment strategies.
This month, another batch of health experts from Israel’s Ministry of Health arrived recently. They all buckled down to work and started their visit with a meeting with the country’s top COVID-19 task force officials.
Chargé d’Affaires Nir Balzam of the Embassy of Israel in the Philippines, said part of the team’s itinerary for their week-long visit include visits to hospitals and other health facilities, dialogues with health and infectious disease specialists, as well as technical discussions.
The Israeli delegation was led by Dr. Guy Choshen, an infectious diseases and COVID-19 specialist from the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.
Other members of the delegation included Shira Peleg, head nurse and nursing manager of Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center Emergency Department; Eyad Jeries, a trauma coordinator from the Galilee Medical Center; and Chaim Markos Rafalowski, a disaster management coordinator from Magen David Adom.
The initial meeting served as a venue to look into the Philippines’ COVID-19 response initiatives vis-a-vis Israel’s pandemic strategy, particularly the lessons the country has learned and applied in its pandemic response and health governance measures.
Department of Health (DOH) Undersecretary and treatment czar Leopoldo Vega presented the mechanisms and systems that have been put in place by the Philippine government to further strengthen its Prevent-Detect-Isolate-Treat-Reintegrate (PDITR) strategy.
On the Israeli delegation’s part, Rafalowski shared how the country has confronted the pandemic, particularly the approaches it has used to effectively manage the Delta variant, which was first detected in May.
He said that despite the rise in COVID-19 cases in the country due to the Delta variant, Israel’s average daily death rate has been consistently low.
Meanwhile, Choshen discussed the local treatment guidelines of Israel for mild, moderate, and severe cases of COVID-19.
He likewise emphasized the impact of a “successful” vaccination campaign in managing the pandemic and putting at bay the highly transmissible variants of COVID-19.
Choshen said that “things would have been different for Israel” if not because of the high vaccination rate in their country.
To date, more than half of Israel’s population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.