Soroka hospital's 700-casualty day presented at WHO Europe meeting in Copenhagen

Israel's Ministry of Health hosted an event in Copenhagen on October 28 that put the experience of Soroka Medical Center during the opening hours of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack in front of international health officials, according to a statement issued by the Israeli government. The hospital took in more than 700 casualties within a matter of hours that day, the statement said.

The gathering was held on the sidelines of the 76th session of the World Health Organization's Regional Committee for Europe. The government said those attending included healthcare leaders and clinicians from abroad, WHO representatives and diplomats. The programme combined documentary footage, testimony from medical staff who were on duty, and a discussion of how hospitals and national authorities manage a mass casualty event.

What was shown

The centrepiece was a specially edited version of a film called The Shift. The ministry's release describes it as drawn from an episode of Real Time (Zman Emet in Hebrew), a programme aired by Kan 11, Israel's public broadcaster. The film pairs security camera recordings from inside the hospital with accounts from the doctors and nurses who treated the wounded, and follows the arrival of the more than 700 casualties.

The panel that followed looked at decisions taken both inside the hospital and at the national level. According to the statement, topics included keeping emergency rooms and operating theatres able to take new patients, organising transfers between hospitals, planning for the possibility of more waves of wounded, and keeping health services running elsewhere in the country at the same time.

The institutions involved

Soroka Medical Center is part of Clalit Health Services, one of the organisations through which Israelis receive publicly funded healthcare. The Ministry of Health is the government body responsible for the national health system; its Director General, Moshe Bar Siman Tov, is the senior civil servant in the ministry and, according to the Israeli ambassador, the person who initiated the Copenhagen event.

The WHO Regional Committee for Europe is the body in which member states of the WHO's European region meet to set regional health policy. Side events such as this one are organised by delegations around the main sessions. The government filed its statement under the heading Swords of Iron, the official Israeli name for the war that followed the October 7 attack.

What the speakers said

Zvi Tal, Israel's ambassador to Denmark, told the audience that preparing for mass casualty incidents in Israel is a core part of medical responsibility rather than a planning formality, and that it depends on people as much as on equipment and procedures. He also repeated criticism of the WHO that he said Israel's delegation had made in its opening statement, referring to what he called politicization within the organisation and unfair treatment of Israel, while saying Israel remained committed to sharing health solutions.

Dr. Hans Kluge, the WHO's Regional Director for Europe, said he had travelled to Israel three times. He recalled a visit on October 31, roughly three weeks after the attack, to offer solidarity to victims, their families and health workers. He named Be'eri, Nir Oz, Kfar Aza, Sderot and the Nova festival site among the places he saw, describing them as "killing fields" even a year on. He said physical presence alongside member states is central to how he understands leadership at the WHO.

Bar Siman Tov argued that bravery by clinical staff has to be backed by preparation and leadership. He said the national task on October 7 was to keep the wider health system functioning, move resources and patients, and make sure hospitals could keep accepting the injured. He described leadership and coordination in such a crisis as "lifesaving capabilities". He also said the effects of the attack on the health system did not end once patients were discharged, pointing to years of physical rehabilitation and mental health treatment for individuals, families and communities, and said emergency performance rests on the quality of routine, day to day care.

Professor Shlomi Codish, Director General of Soroka Medical Center, said hospital teams faced an event of exceptional scale and had to make complex clinical decisions in real time amid chaos and uncertainty.

What the reports do not say

This account rests on a single source: a statement published by the Israeli government, which organised the event. No independent report of the evening was available. The statement does not say how many people attended, which countries or WHO officials were present beyond those quoted, or how the audience responded. It does not give a breakdown of the more than 700 casualties by severity or outcome, and the version available to us ends partway through Professor Codish's remarks. The statement also does not say whether the WHO or other delegations replied to the ambassador's criticism of the organisation, or whether the film will be shown elsewhere.