10 employees and volunteers from Magen David Adom (MDA) participated in a joint workshop on the Safer Access Framework with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

The Safer Access Framework (SAF) is comprised of actions and measures, that, if taken by a National Society (MDA in Israel), according to context-specific priorities – will increase its acceptance, security and access to people and communities in need.

The current workshop aimed to reflect on lessons learned from MDA’s recent operations, and to further explore how SAF can be integrated in its existing operational systems, procedures and guidelines.

“We discussed scenarios and added more tools to our tool box in order to deal with future situations”, said Refael, MDA paramedic and one of the participants in the workshop.

“We brought the implementation of the term ‘safe access’ to the context of the participants”, said Catherine Marie Martin, ICRC National Society Capacity Building Support Advisor in Geneva.

“The framework itself is applicable to all contexts, but it needs to be put into the context where the national society operates”, said Martin. “And here we discussed the lessons learned by MDA and see where we can further improve the access, acceptance and security – based on the lenses that they operate with.”

“SAF is actually something that we practice in our work on a daily basis”, said Asaf Chen, from MDA Gilboa district, who is also involved in disaster management activities. “One of the ways we practiced was by learning from real cases, analysing and discussing them in order to think together what could have been done better.

“This is not the first time that MDA have done a workshop on a safer access”, said Martin. “But this time the aim is to make sure that safer access framework is actually applied in the modus operandi and the day to day operation of the MDA”.