By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
All of the Healing Gardens in Hadassah Medical Center’s under-construction, 14-story Sarah Wetsman Davidson Tower in Ein Kerem, Jerusalem, are already spoken for, but you can still lock in the naming rights for a clinic or a floor.
The managing partner of the Detroit Pistons, William Davidson, reserved the most prestigious honor for his mother, Sarah, in contributing to the $164 million already raised by the Hadassah Organization during the initial “quiet phase’ of its fundraising campaign.
At this point, $65 million more is needed for the completion of the project, which will replace the now demolished 45-year-old facility with a state-of-the art substitute.
In a few years’ time, the new and to-be-completed center will offer four sealed underground floors of operating rooms to protect many more patients, allow doctors to perfect the latest robotic surgery techniques, and maintain the trauma and intensive care facilities that serve anyone who comes in from throughout the region.
“We were nominated for a Nobel peace prize for our clinical results and our outreach to different populations,” said Dr. Yair Birnbaum, a pediatric cardiologist who is deputy director general for the Hadassah Medical Organization and director of the Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem. “Everyone deserves to be treated.”
During his trip to Seattle, Birnbaum told JTNews that the medical center’s collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control in the U.S., and with Palestinian and Ethiopian doctors, is exemplary.
“Our care is totally unbiased,” said Birnbaum, who keynoted the Hadassah Seattle Chapter’s annual gala. “We’ve adopted an orphanage in Addis Ababa to foster children whose parents died of HIV/AIDS. We train Ethiopian nurses and physicians in the prevention of AIDS, and we have joint projects with pediatric cardiologists and general practitioners from the Palestinian Authority in Nablus to provide open-heart surgeries. This is all funded, in part, by the Peres Peace Fund and supporters in Italy.”
After the 2004 earthquake and resulting tsunami that occurred in the Indian Ocean in Southeast Asia, Hadassah sent a team of child psychiatrists to Sri Lanka to help the population deal with the trauma suffered from the catastrophic damage and loss of life.
Israel’s Ministry of External Affairs also sent Hadassah teams to several Asian Islands with populations below 100,000 to perform delicate eye surgeries on afflicted children there.
“This hospital is a bridge to peace,” said Carolyn Hathaway, president of Hadassah’s Seattle chapter. “The fundraising campaign has received major support from England, Panama, Mexico, Switzerland, and others. It is truly an international effort.”
The 95-year-old Hadassah Medical Center is a two-hospital system that supports 1,000 hospital beds and employs 5,000 general staff, 1,600 nurses and 600 physicians. Hadassah is the second biggest employer in Israel, second only to the Israeli government. However, all of the capital development as well as the equipment for Hadassah Hospitals in Israel comes from its donors, and mainly from the United States.
The center’s buildings haven’t been significantly renovated since 1962. Since then, building codes have been upgraded twice.
Today, the threat of an atomic, biological or chemical attack in Israel has increased to such a degree that the Israeli Army won’t let construction on a building continue unless certain structural and security plans are in place first.
“We learned that you have to be able to secure a bigger percentage of your patients in protected areas,” said Birnbaum. “In the floors below ground, we have doors that close and hermetically seal the rooms. We also have double air conditioning with filtering that turns on automatically.”
And it’s not only security measures that need to be upgraded. The staff and patients will benefit from the new facility’s ability to accommodate state-of-the-art technologies and additional space for new equipment, so that the cutting edge research that distinguishes Hadassah can continue.
Two out of the top 10 articles in the journal Stem Cells, The International Journal of Cell Differentiation and Proliferation, came from work done at the Hadassah. In Israel, there is no debate about the benefits of this type of research.
“In our society it is a non-issue,” said Birnbaum. “The core of stem cell research is coaxing cells into becoming any cells. This process has given many older patients relief from macular degeneration, Parkinson’s disease, and even diabetes. Diabetics can receive cells that secrete insulin at just the right time. We have improved (the condition of) rats with Parkinson’s Disease.”
Researchers there have also developed a pacemaker for Parkinson’s patients that sends impulses to their brain. Once it is implanted in the right location, the ability to control movement is dramatically improved for the patient.
“We now have technological ways of making the patient move around freely,” said Birnbaum.
With the promise of a completely high-tech and safer workplace on the horizon, the Hadassah administrator, who is also a rabbinical school graduate, can rest easier about the future of care in the facility he watches over.
“You can’t manufacture beds that don’t exist, and you have to juggle the best you can,” said Birbaum, reflecting back on the years in the old building. “But our enemies will be happy to aim at the hospital and hit the hospital. To ensure that these buildings can continue to function even if they are under attack, we have to be able to protect at least 70 percent of our patients and secure them in a protected area.”