The Israeli field hospital was opened in Haiti about 48 hours after the earthquake. The Israeli team of 220, including 40 doctors, 20 nurses and paramedics arrived from Israel and had the hospital set up and accepting patients in Port-au-Prince just as the Jewish Sabbath came in on the evening of Friday Jan 15th .
This repeats what happened in the deadly 2001 Gujarat earthquake in India, when the Israeli field hospital was also in the Indian quake the first field hospital to arrive. In fact, in 2001 at Gujarat, the Israeli hospital was the only hospital open in the disaster zone for over a week until the Red Cross set up a second one. The Israeli hospital also deployed for the big Turkish quake in 1999.
The mobile Israeli hospital including all its equipment weighs just 10 tons including its own generators and water purification so it is totally self sufficient and fits inside a single 747 cargo plane, which is why the Israelis are able to deploy their hospital into disaster zones so much faster than anyone else. The Israeli hospital is constructed of simple standard issue canvas army tents, not inflatables, but has an ICU complete with life support, surgeries, imaging, neonatal etc. It takes about 8 hours to set up and can treat 500 patients a day.
Video of the Israeli hospital equipment being loaded onto the 747 the night of January 14th in Tel Aviv
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pakGYGwEgAw
CNN, Jan 17th at the Israeli hospital treating patients in Port-au-Prince
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suo6UzRb85
CBS News, Jan 18th at the Israeli hospital
http://www.youtube.com/v/qbcUAFbXGBI
ABC News, Jan 18th at the Israeli hospital
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=9591907
NBC News, January 19th at the Israeli hospital
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#34944405
