04 Mar LOIS POPE DONATES 12TH AMBULANCE TO AFMDA LIFE—SAVING FLEET IN HONOR OF MILLY & PATRICK PARK
When does 12 equal thousands? When Lois Pope, one of the nation’s top humanitarians and philanthropists, makes yet another donation to American Friends of Magen David Adom (AFMDA) to purchase a 12th mobile intensive care unit (MICU), enabling Magen David Adom in Israel to save thousands more lives.
“We call these ambulances ‘the Lois Pope life-saving fleet’,” said Tamura Karu, Palm Beach County director for AFMDA. “Through her generosity to Magen David Adom, Mrs. Pope continues to have a meaningful and direct impact on emergency first response care in Israel. The Israeli people are eternally grateful for her commitment.”
As with her past MICU donations, Mrs. Pope’s latest gift is in honor of someone else, in this case it is dedicated to dear friends Patrick and Milly Park. The Parks hosted the AFMDA major donor dinner at the exclusive 1000 NORTH on February 11, 2019. More than 160 guests attended the dedication and exquisite dinner.
“I want to thank Milly & Patrick Park, Tammy Karu and all my American Friends of Magen David Adom for this wonderful evening,” said Lois Pope. “The reason I donated these ambulances and support Magen David Adom is because it connects me with two things I so passionately believe in: the state of Israel and its people; and ensuring that those in need of medical assistance can get it quickly. After all, my foundation is called LIFE and what better way to show my commitment to it than to bond with a people whose toast is L’Chaim, to life?”
According to Ms. Karu, the ambulances donated by Lois Pope over the years have played a vital role in Israel, providing aid and emergency transportation to everyone from victims of rocket and terrorist attacks to victims of heart attacks and auto accidents. They’ve also served as the birthplace for some of the more than 100 babies that are born annually in Magen David Adom ambulances in route to the hospital.
Magen David Adom is an organization of trained volunteer and professional medical responders mandated by the Israeli government to provide the nation’s pre-hospital emergency medical care, including disaster, ambulance and blood services. The MDA National Blood Services Center provides 100 percent of the blood needs of the Israel Defense Forces and 95 percent of the blood needs of Israel’s hospitals. American Friends of Magen David Adom funded the construction of the MDA National Blood Services Center, continue to build or renovate many of MDA’s emergency medical stations throughout Israel, and supply MDA with a wide range of emergency medical supplies and equipment, including most of the organization’s 800 ambulances and Mobile Intensive Care Units (MICUs). These ambulances are on call 24/7, logging nearly 10 million miles and caring for nearly 570,000 patients annually. For more information, visit www.afmda.org.
About Lois Pope, The Lois Pope LIFE Foundation, Inc., & LIFE (Leaders in Furthering Education)
As one of America’s leading philanthropists, Lois Pope has positively impacted the lives of individuals at the local, national and international levels. She has established three different organizations dedicated to helping those in need – those who are disadvantaged, marginalized, or forgotten because of disabilities, socio-economic status, neglect, age, abuse, and other barriers. They are the Lois Pope LIFE Foundation, Leaders in Furthering Education (LIFE), and the Disabled Veterans LIFE Memorial Foundation. Over the past quarter-century, she has been the driving force behind the Lois Pope LIFE Center at the University of Miami School of Medicine; a summer camp program serving thousands of disadvantaged children in Florida; a scholarship program for low-income students of enormous potential who desired to attend medical school and then go back to serve in their home communities; a program offering researchers with the means to pursue cutting-edge work in finding cures for terrible diseases; a clean water system in a Guatemalan village; an effort to aid refugee women in Sudan; an initiative that has resulted in nearly a dozen ambulances in Israel; and numerous partnerships with American Humane to expand rescue operations for dogs (cats and other animals) victimized by natural disasters and horrific abuse, as well as those who have fought alongside human soldiers on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan. Most recently, she made a $12 million gift to establish the Lois Pope Center for Retinal and Macular Degeneration Research at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute’s Palm Beach Gardens campus, the largest donation ever to the institute. She has also produced two documentaries with award-winning director Ric Burns highlighting the plights of disabled veterans in the U.S. “Debt of Honor” and “VA: The Human Cost of War.”
To learn more visit www.life-edu.org.