Nurse Sheva Cohen from Ein Yahav on the right

The Israeli delegation, one of the first to come to the assistance of the earthquake-stricken Haitians, hit the ground running. The personnel dispatched included the Israel Defense Forces' search and rescue teams, forensic teams, and medical teams. Upon arrival these teams started working around the clock assisting local authorities, UN agencies and other national teams with their search and rescue efforts. By January 15th over 200 personnel had already deployed, and a rapidly constructed field hospital in Port-Au-Prince with the capacity to treat over 500 patients a day began operating; the hospital has performed hundreds of life-saving operations, and has delivered several babies.

Nurse Sheva Cohen from Ein Yahav, one of the first settlers on Moshav Ein Yahav and a longtime nurse in the region was one of the first arrivals. Sheva joined other Israeli medical professionals who started treating patients at the site of the collapsed main Port-au-Prince Hospital while the Israeli field hospital was being set up. Thousands of wounded desperate for help had gathered at the central hospital. In her words: "The scenes in the hospital were horrible; we saw people everywhere - on the floors in the building and outside; people with amputations and bone-deep wounds, hundreds of them. The size of the catastrophe is unbelievable. All of the injured were treated, until we came, by only one local doctor, and we were the first foreign backup team to operate in the hospital." Within a few days Carni Lev from Moshav Tsofar, who has also been nursing in the region for many years, joined the Israeli team in Haiti, which had grown to over 220 members. The participation of Sheva and Carni on the medical mission was made possible with the support of the Arava Search & Rescue Unit.

The valiant work of Israel's rescue mission to Haiti was of course widely covered in the Israeli press, but as the days passed the delegation's efforts garnered praise from many international media organizations, including CNN, the English Sky News channel, and American NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox News organizations, among others.