Deir el-Asad - In the northern Muslim town of Deir el-Asad, a two-year-old boy who suffers from a chronic heart condition known as VSD suffered a complication and fell unconscious at his home on Monday morning. His worried mother called emergency services for help. 

United Hatzalah volunteer EMTs Mustafa Abed Assadi, Adiv Boqua’ai, and regional paramedic Nissim Zinaty all received the alert and rushed over to the given location of the emergency on al-Jabal Street.  

Mustafa rushed out of his job as system manager for a security system company and was the first responder at the family’s home. As he walked in the door the boy’s worried mother rushed over to him with her son and explained about her son’s chronic heart condition. Mustafa, together with Adiv, who had arrived a minute after him, checked for a pulse on the young boy, and finding none, began CPR. 

After a few rounds of compressions, they managed to get a faint pulse back, but enough to enable them to transport the boy in an ambulance from the Hian ambulance company to meet up with Nissim, who was coming to them. They joined Nissim who administered medications and continued treatment of the boy while the ambulance transported the boy and his worried mother to Rambam Hospital in Haifa. 

“I was so thankful that we were able to rescue this boy,” said Mustafa. “He is so young and his whole life ahead of him. He and his family have already been through a lot in terms of medical issues due to his illness. This certainly wasn’t the first time I left work and responded to an emergency in which CPR was required, but it was incredibly meaningful. It made my entire day.” 

Mustafa who just a few days ago responded to a shooting incident and was only able to save one of the people involved there said that this was a bit of recompense for the tragedy from a few days before. “There is a lot of violence nowadays and there is a lot of tragedy. It is uplifting to be able to save a life and add some good into the world.”

Nissim, who was near the Deir el-Asad interchange when the emergency alert came out, changed direction from going to work and instead turned into the town to respond to the emergency.  

“The team of United Hatzalah volunteers including Mustafa and Adiv brought the young boy to me and we rendezvoused with an ICU ambulance from Hian ambulances. I rode with the boy and continued CPR with the ambulance team until we were able to get him completely stabilized while en route to Rambam medical center in Haifa. I must say thank you to United Hatzalah for providing us with the necessary life-saving equipment that they give us. Without it, we would not have been able to save this boy’s life today.”