Israel Medical Association Journal

Background: On 7 October 2023, Hamas lunched a massive terror attack against Israel. The first weeks after were characterized with great uncertainty, insecurity, and fear.

Objectives: To evaluate the effect of the first 2 months of the Iron Swords war on obstetrical emergency attendance and the corresponding perinatal outcomes.

Methods: We conducted a single center retrospective cohort study of all singleton births between 7 October and 7 December 2023. Prenatal emergency labor ward admission numbers and obstetric outcomes during the first 2 months of the war were compared to the combined corresponding periods for the years 2018–2022.

Results: During the initial 2 months of the conflict 1379 births were documented. The control group consisted of 7304 deliveries between 2018 and 2022. There was a decrease in daily emergency admissions to the labor ward during the first 5 weeks of the conflict compared to the corresponding periods in the preceding years (51.8 ± 15.0 vs. 57.0 ± 13.0, P = 0.0458). A notable increase in stillbirth rates was observed in the study group compared to the control group (5/1379 [0.36%] vs. 7/7304 [0.1%]; P = 0.014). Both groups exhibited similar gestational ages at birth, rates of preterm and post-term delivery, neonatal birthweights, mode of delivery, and induction of labor rates.

Conclusions: In the initial weeks following Hamas's attack on Israel, there was a notable decrease in admissions to the prenatal emergency labor ward. This decline coincided with an increase in the rate of stillbirths among a population not directly involved in the conflict.

War is a chaotic situation for most of the public sectors in the countries involved. These sectors also include the medical systems, especially medical education, of which medical communication is often neglected or forgotten due to objective and subjective causes on either side of the involved countries. By planning lessons on various aspects of medicine for countries at war and close mentoring and utilization of modern communications technologies, these difficulties can be minimized without jeopardizing the quality of medical studies nor medical communication. In this perspective article, we describe the objective and subjective measures taken by our team to achieve these goals during the Iron Swords war in our region.

The ancient, Biblical, holy Ten Commandments were presented to humanity to serve as guidelines for relationships between individuals and the deity they worship as well as a benchmark for living in civilized communities, irrespective of religious affiliation. The commandments are also embedded in medical education taught to medical students and other health professions throughout the world. Thus, the Ten Commandments are embedded in the medical communications curriculum at Adelson School of Medicine, Ariel University, Ariel, Israel. Unfortunately, most of these commandments were desecrated during the violent, hostile, merciless, and ruthless attack inflicted by the Hamas terror organization on villages, rural communities, and cities in southern Israel on 7 October 2023. We define the Ten Commandments in terms of medical education and describe their desecration by Hamas terrorists before and during the Iron Swords war.