Yachad D’Bobov Hosts Yom Kippur I.V. Service in New Location

By Yehudit Garmaise

   Anyone who requires the use of intravenous fluids during the upcoming fast on Monday can stop by Yachad D'Bobov’s annual Yom Kippur I.V. service, whose main location this year can be found at a new address: Bnos Zion Seminary (the building that was formerly Khal Chassadim) which is located at 4820 15th Ave. In addition, Yachad D’Bobov will be providing its I.V. service at three other Boro Park locations:  the Belzer Shul, which is at 1321 43rd St., StatCare, which is at 1270 51st St., and Brisdovitz, which is located at 1721 58th St.

   In addition to Yachad D’Bobov’s usual requirement that patients bring verbal rabbinic authorizations, this year’s patients are also required to bring written doctors’ prescriptions that detail explicit instructions as to the appropriate types and amounts of I.V. fluids for each patient, explained Chaim Fleischer, whose father, Yitzchak Fleischer, the executive director of Bobov Bikur Cholim, created the Yom Kippur I.V. service 20 years ago. Although Fleischer always had helped his father with the I.V. service, in the past 15 years, he has helped to expand the Yom Kippur I.V. service to provide four locations to help more Yidden in Boro Park.

    "Covid can create kidney issues that require us to have to be very careful with administering the right types of liquids in the right amounts." said Fleischer, who said that Yachad D’Bobov provides I.V. service to hundreds of Yidden every Yom Kippur. ”We have to be very careful as to what to give and to whom to give."

    Patients with rabbinic dispensation and doctors’ notes who know they will be using I.V.s on Monday can get their ports inserted erev Yom Kippur by stopping by Yachad D’Bobov’s main location at 4820 15th Ave. between 1-4pm on Sunday.      

    Once medics insert patients’ ports, Yachad D'Bobov volunteers and medics can then train patients to insert their own I.V. bags into the ports, so that patients do not have to return on Yom Kippur, explained Fleischer.

     Patients who do not want to insert their own bags or who are not yet sure whether they will need I.V.s in advance can walk to any of the locations of Yachad D'Bobov’s I.V. service, without a reservation, anytime between 8am and 7pm during Yom Kippur on Monday.

    Yachad D'Bobov also provides a medical equipment gemach, but the organization kindly seeks to meet a wide variety of people’s needs, explained Fleischer, who founded Yachad D’Bobov 18 years ago.

    “Often, when facing challenges, people cannot focus and they don’t know how to seek the kind of help they need,” Fleischer said. “No matter what kind of crisis a person faces, we want to be there to help.”