BRADZE, Macedonia — “This one we call Yirmiyahu, that one is Tikva and this one here is Fortuna Ziona,” said Col. Dan Engelhard, a pediatrician, pointing to the three newborns under his care.
Another baby, a girl, was born in the refugee camp hospital on Thursday of last week. Her delivery by Israeli doctors was taped by half a dozen TV crews from around the world.
“How do you say ‘mazel tov’ in Albanian?” one doctor asked. “Te’et mershendat,” the translator replied.
“Te’et mershendat. You have a daughter,” announced the Israeli doctor.
“I don’t know what we will call her,” said the father, Savit Barisha, who fled Kosovo only two weeks before. “But we are looking for a Muslim name connected with Israel.”
Though babies have been born here, the Israel Defense Force field hospital in Macedonia is not just a delivery ward. Fewer than 24 hours after arriving, the Israelis had the only fully equipped hospital available for the tens of thousands of refugees who fled Kosovo. Hundreds of patients seeking medical assistance have been heading toward the blue and white Israeli flag flying from many tents in the compound.
“We are here because we all feel as if we are truly on a mission,” said Maj. Yitzhak Kreiss, an IDF doctor. “Even if we are only rehydrating the parched, or giving pain relief, or even just vitamins and comfort, then I feel as if we have done a lot.”
In addition to the joy of the births, those at the hospital also witnessed the death of a 52-year-old woman who arrived in the night and suddenly died two hours later from an apparent embolism, doctors said. British soldiers came in the morning to take her body to a special morgue, to be held there until the fate of the refugees is decided.
The IDF field hospital, ferried in last week on four C-130 cargo planes, has been treating ethnic Albanian refugees with 35 medical staff, some of them regular IDF officers and others who were called up for reserve duty, like Capt. Moshe Efrat from the Carmel Government Hospital in Haifa, The self-contained 100-bed hospital has its own laboratory, X-ray equipment, pediatric ward and surgery unit.
About 12 children lie on cots, some receiving IVs, others being treated for stomach bugs. In the corner is a makeshift incubator assembled out of a cardboard box, plastic sheeting and a heater.
Efrat, 48, is an expert in infectious diseases. He explained there is a risk of hepatitis or other diseases breaking out, but this is being reduced daily.
“The lucky part for us is that the treatment of the refugees is very organized and they are being given shelter and water and food. The danger is that if more people come, overwhelming the situation, and then things could spread.”
Engelhard, a colonel in the reserves and a pediatrician at Jerusalem’s Hadassah-University Hospital, gently placed an infant born just that morning on the stretcher next to her mother. The father had left to stand in line for food in the camp.
The doctor stood up as a Macedonian medical official walked into the pediatric tent with a fistful of papers. The official informed Engelhard that she was taking the mother and baby to another hospital reserved for Albanians, 35 kilometers away along the border.
“Please wait for the father. It creates problems if you don’t send a family off together. Please. Please wait for him. We can’t send her off without her husband. We have had bad experiences in the past,” Engelhard told the official, adding that they could not let the baby go without the approval of the hospital commander.
By nightfall, after a second unsuccessful attempt to move the woman and child, it seemed the Macedonians had given up. For Engelhard, who received the Medal of Valor during the Yom Kippur War, keeping the family together was a small victory.
“The Israelis have been a great help,” said Capt. Giovanni Marchese of the Italian NATO forces. “We were sent out here at short notice and we are not completely prepared for the scale of this catastrophe. The Israelis are taking some of the more seriously ill and they are a great help.”
The mess tent of this Israeli MASH unit is made up of beat-up wooden tables and high-backed chairs bought from a merchant in Skopje, the nearby Macedonian capital. A supply flight last week brought loudspeakers for announcements to the team.
“The people here are made from a different mold,” said Kreiss, an IDF doctor who volunteered to come. “They are full of humanity and see what we are doing here as a national mission.”