Rambam hospital's protected underground floor being readied in case of attack

Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa has been cleaning and preparing Sammy Ofer Hospital, which is on the third floor below ground level, at the request of Home Front Command.

The preparations do not involve moving wards and patients there, the hospital said, but rather to be ready in the event of developments in the North that would require protected medical care for the sick, wounded, and medical teams.

Capabilities of the floor

The floor can contain about 700 beds in an emergency and function independently with electricity, water, and oxygen supply, the hospital said. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the floor was first used operationally as a COVID-19-protected hospital.

In the first phase, the hospital is installing toilets, showers, air conditioning, and communication lines.Rambam is the main medical tertiary medical center in the North, and in the event of an emergency, wounded and sick people from all over the North would be referred to it, including dialysis patients and other urgent medical cases.