Lena Liani, a ninth-grader enrolled in a training program run by Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s national emergency medical service, was just days away from taking her midterm exam when her training was unexpectedly put to the test. Coming home from school, Lena noticed her father, Rafael, was acting abnormally.

“He wasn’t speaking clearly, made strange movements, and fell on the couch,” Lena said. Drawing on the medical assessments she had recently studied, she performed basic checks and suspected he might be having a stroke. “I told my mother that we had to take him to the hospital,” she said.

A stroke is a medical emergency that occurs when the blood supply to part of the brain is interrupted or reduced, preventing brain tissue from getting oxygen and nutrients. This can cause brain cells to begin dying within minutes.