An 11-year-old boy from central Israel went for a hike with his father about a week ago, near the Ein Coves spring in the north. After hiking for about two hours, the father suddenly collapsed and lost consciousness, probably as a result of heatstroke.
The 11-year-old immediately used his father's kosher phone to call the police, who immediately connected the MDA 101 hotline.
"My father collapsed," he said. "Please let me speak to an adult who is near you," the MDA paramedic requested. "There's no adult here," the boy said. "It's just the two of us on the mountain."
"When you call his name, does he answer you?" the paramedic said in an attempt to identify the reason for the father's collapse and the best way to treat him. "Does he have any illnesses? Did he drink during the hike?"
The boy responded calmly to all the questions. "He breathing but he's sleeping. I don't think he has any illnesses. I think he simply collapsed from exhaustion. We've already hiked for two hours and he drank a lot. At a certain point, he said that he couldn't go on anymore."
The paramedic instructed the boy to take chocolate and smear it on his father's gums in case his father collapsed due to low blood sugar. She also instructed him to check the color of his father's lips and his body temperature. Since his father was hot to the touch, the paramedic instructed him to take a bottle of cold water and place it on his father's body.
The boy calmly followed all the instructions and continued to try to wake his father, without despairing for a minute. The paramedic asked him to try to locate other people on the hiking trail but there was still no one nearby. He didn't lose his cool and continued to follow the paramedic's instructions as emergency forces made their way to where they were located.
"He opened his eyes a little," the boy said calmly. The paramedic instructed him to rub more chocolate in his father's mouth.
The boy estimated the amount of time it would take the paramedics to reach their location from the road. He provided exact details of their location which enabled MDA paramedics to locate them along with using the father's phone to track their location.
"Scream loudly," the paramedic told the son, as an MDA crew approached the estimated location. "Once you hear the helicopter we sent, the ambulance or police, tell me immediately."
Around half an hour from the start of the conversation, a genuine sigh of relief was heard from both ends of the phone as MDA's first team arrived. "This is MDA's paramedic Shimon Bismuth. We reached them and everything is fine." The paramedic praised the son for maintaining his equilibrium and saving his father's life before hanging up.
The father received life-saving medical treatment from MDA paramedics and was evacuated by a military helicopter to a hospital after being sedated and attached to a respirator. After a few days, he was released from Ziv Hospital in Tzfat in good condition.
MDA Director-General Eli Bin said: "The 11-year-old is a real hero. His role in the incident had great weight in the chain of events which saved his father's life, as well as the level-headedness and professionalism of the paramedic on MDA's 101 hotline."
"This incident is a vivid example of the importance of the My MDA widget, which should be installed on every child's or adult's cellular phone. You can reach the MDA Emergency Call Center at the touch of a button with the My MDA widget, while the staff at the hotline can automatically identify the exact location of those in need of help."