ZAKA calls for public vigilance as 121 people found dead alone this year

In response to the recent discovery of the decaying body of a 42-year-old man in his Ashdod home, the ZAKA rescue and recovery organization has called for public vigilance. The man, who had been deceased for a few days, was the 121st person found under such circumstances this year, ZAKA said in a press release.

“This incident joins another 120 similar ones that ZAKA volunteers handled in 2020 throughout Israel in which lonely and childless elderly people were found in their homes long after they had died,” said Avi Deri, ZAKA’s commander for the Lachish region. “With pain and tears we handled the deceased with respect at the difficult scene. If you have a lonely or childless neighbor, check on them at least once a day and report to welfare authorities to save their lives.”

The issue of elderly people who live alone or are neglected has become more prevalent this year due to fear of contracting the coronavirus and the resultant lockdowns. ZAKA said it handles on a weekly basis an average of four cases of elderly people found dead in their homes.

In 2019, 130 people died alone, it said.

“We found him lying on the floor in the house with no signs of life many days after his death,” said Yossi Landau, ZAKA’s operations officer for the Lachish region. “The neighbors told us that after a terrible smell began leaking into the stairwell, they summoned the police to the apartment, where they found the body of the deceased in a state of severe decay.”

Yad Sarah and ZAKA are working together to provide emergency alert buttons and sensors for elderly people to prevent such incidents.

During the first wave of the coronavirus in Israel, ZAKA urged the public to call the elderly and lonely every day to check up on them after numerous senior citizens were found dead in their homes.

On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the decaying body of an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor was found in her Beersheba home after she fell and died on Passover Eve more than a week before.

In Petah Tikva, ZAKA volunteers were summoned to an apartment where a woman suffering from mental illness was trying to comfort and feed her 70-year-old mother who had passed away more than a week before.