In his recent conversation on The Jerusalem Post’s podcast, Eli Beer, Founder and President of United Hatzalah, outlined the organization’s ambitious, long-standing mission to revolutionize emergency medical response through a "90-second" goal.
"The fact is that I came up with this when I was a child," Beer recalled. "I said: 'It can't be that an ambulance takes them so long to get there. We could have the next-door neighbor jump out of their home and save that little kid.' Many people asked, 'How are you going to do that?' It's easy. Get enough people. We need to double the number of volunteers we have, and once we have 16,000 volunteers, our mission, our goal, will succeed." To overcome this, he pioneered a model where responders could jump into action immediately, providing life-saving care while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
Achieving this mission at scale, however, requires significant growth. Beer candidly identified the primary barriers to this expansion: the ongoing need for specialized training, securing funding, and navigating organizational bureaucracy.
Despite these hurdles, Beer remains steadfast in his commitment, noting that doubling the current volunteer force is key to achieving the mission's full potential. With a growing network of volunteers embedded in every neighborhood and building across Israel, the organization aims to ensure that no emergency goes unanswered. By leveraging this "crowd-sourced" model, United Hatzalah seeks to drastically improve survival rates, proving that when community members are empowered and equipped, they can collectively transform the landscape of emergency medical care.
Written in collaboration with United Hatzalah