MDA's first Druse woman medic delivers Beduin baby in Arad

Thirty-nine-year-old Zinnat Bassem Fares, who was born in Kafr Rama near Karmiel, lives today in Arad with her husband and 12-year-old twin girls.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
zinnat fares 248.88 (photo credit: Courtesy)
zinnat fares 248.88
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Israel's first and, for-the-moment, only Druse female medic and ambulance driver delivered a baby for the first time on Tuesday. The baby girl and her mother, a Beduin woman who delayed going to Beersheba's Soroka University Medical Center because she feared the cesarean section she was scheduled to undergo, are doing well. Thirty-nine-year-old Zinnat Bassem Fares, who was born in Kafr Rama near Karmiel, lives today in Arad with her husband and 12-year-old twin girls. "I did what I was taught to do in Magen David Adom," said Fares, who was about to end her shift when the Beduin woman came with labor pains to MDA's Arad ambulance and first-aid station. Fares, a pioneer among Druse women in a conservative, male-controlled society, left her village at the age of 16 and went to live in New York with her older brother to study. When she completed her bachelor's degree in business administration, she was hired to work in the marketing department of the Levis jeans company and worked there for 12 years. But she was homesick and decided to return to Israel, where she married and had children. Her father and brother encouraged her to train as a medic and ambulance driver. Next month, she will participate in an advanced MDA paramedics course followed by an instructors' course. Fares credits her father for encouraging her and her siblings to be independent, take care of themselves and take advantage of all their abilities. Druse women, like Jewish women, have to "invest four or five times as much effort than men to succeed. But I have faith in women and their ability to lead and influence," she said. "It is possible to integrate family life and work shifts," she added. MDA director-general Eli Bin praised Fares as a role model and said she is a model of coexistence in his organization, which integrates Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Beduin and Druse in saving lives.