Israel – MDA Prepares Stickers To Ask Passersby To Check For Babies In Others’ Vehicles

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    Israel – While the voluntary first-aid and rescue organization United Hatzalah (UH) is now printing up 30,000 additional stickers to be affixed inside the driver’s door warning against leaving young children in vehicles, competing Magen David Adom has also adopted the sticker idea — but with a different message.

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    Meanwhile, on Tuesday, UH president Eli Beer reached an agreement with the Binyamin Regional Council – in whose jurisdiction in the territories two babies died this week after being left in their parents’ cars – to issue 10,000 warning stickers, one for each car. The effort will be carried out jointly by UH and the council.

    In the last three weeks, three infants have been “broiled” to death, left in cars with oven-like temperatures by fathers distracted by their cell phones or tired from work. In the last five years, several hundred children were left alone in locked cars; most survived, some with injuries, while around two dozen died.

    While the UH sticker is aimed at parents’ taking responsibility for their children and its presence — in any of four languages — intended to become mandatory for an annual vehicle license, MDA chose bumper stickers asking passersby to look into cars for children left inside others’ vehicles.

    The idea stickers on the inside of the driver’s door — and requiring their presence in any of four languages to get one’s annual vehicle license — was initiated by The Jerusalem Post five years ago, but it was then rejected out of hand by then-deputy health minister Ya’acov Litzman, who said: “It won’t work.” The Post’s sticker idea was again rejected by Litzman at a press conference presenting a child accident report written by Beterem-Israel Center for Child Safety and Health after the deputy minister said he would “give a prize to anyone able to bring down the toll of children’s accidents.”

    Health Ministry director-general Prof. Ronni Gamzu said at the press conference that he would not implement any idea that “hasn’t been proven and published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.”

    Discouraged by ministry refusals, the Post turned to Beer, president and founder of UH, who immediately agreed, pulled out his personal checkbook and paid for designing and printing stickers warning parents not to leave a child in a car alone even for a minute. After a few thousand stickers in Hebrew, Arabic, English and Russian ran out due to public demand, he printed 400,000 more, the cost covered by an insurance company. The UH stickers can be personalized for even more impact by affixing a photo of the driver’s own child or grandchild on it.

    Beer said this week that he personally knows of many tragedies prevented by the sticker’s presence. He has ordered 30,000 more for immediate distribution by its thousands of volunteers and said he will ask the head of the Sonol petrol station company, a friend of his, to distribute them around the country. “After one petrol company does it, all the others will want the stickers too,” Beer said.

    Earlier this month, Health Minister Yael German endorsed the Post’s idea and said she would implement it. But a few days later, her spokeswoman Pnina Shalev said the minister “did not find any ministry official with the ability to carry it out or the interest to do so.” As a result, German has been looking for voluntary organizations to carry it out.

    “Using stickers that would be required in cars to renew one’s vehicle license is perhaps a temporary solution or an additional safety measure, Beer said, “as it could take a long time to ensure that a device functions without error, is manufactured and installed on new cars and retrofitted on older ones and that their functioning is checked at vehicle testing centers. We don’t want to wait for more children to die.”

    Beer said the government “has not thought ahead and worried about the problem of adults forgetting kids in cars because it isn’t 40 people dying in one catastrophe; it is one baby at a time. But children are dying all the time in the summer,” he said.

    “Many people who received our stickers have told me they had a bunch of children in the car, and that they remembered not to leave any inside as they saw the sticker on the opened door as they got out,” Beer said. He suggested that a government investigation committee could look into the problem and find a technological solution, but that it would take years. “We have to find a solution. In the longer term, if a reliable and affordable sensing device could be found, it must become a requirement like seatbelts. There could be tax breaks on them.”

    The government was at fault for not sponsoring TV and radio public service adds, which would help raise consciousness before the summer ends, Beer added. “Every newspaper and TV and radio station must give free public service space and time for such messages.”

    Meanwhile, MDA director-general Eli Bin called the Post on Sunday to hear details on the UH prevention campaign. In the end, however, he adopted a different approach of stickers on the theme of “Look and Save.” To be distributed with flyers at malls, intersections and other places by MDA staff medics and volunteers, the stickers aim at asking passersby to look into other people’s vehicles and alert MDA if they see children locked inside. MDA has not made it clear where the sticker should be affixed — as an exterior bumper sticker or inside the vehicle.

    Content is provided courtesy of the Jerusalem Post


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    3 Comments
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    10 years ago

    What retrofitting needs to be done for a sticker???
    Great idea. Start it here in America too. No more ” I ran in for a minute” because all of us in the store may run in for a minute and we’re ahead of you in line!!

    zevvy
    zevvy
    10 years ago

    In hot weather, I always leave all four windows open about an inch or so (unless it’s raining) so that the temperature in the car doesn’t build up making it unbearable to get back in. This method of neutralizing the temperature in the car will also make it impossible for a forgotten child to get hurt or die. I’m always surprised that very few others have thought of this simple but effective method of dealing with the heat in our cars.