The buzz is now MSR = Medical Simulation Research. Mistakes, that find a patient dead, is the third killer in the United States, 300,000 cased a year, after cardiac and cancer, totaling 600,000 cases a year, each.
The MSR center in Sheba Medical Center, located in the town of Ramat Gan, in center Israel, has one important job, to prevent mistakes and save life.
Born in Israel, I remember that Sheba’s name was Tel Ha’shomer, meaning Hill of the Guardsman Hospital, the guardsman of health and healing. For years Tel Ha’shomer neighborhood was known to the Israeli public to be a major Israel Defense Forces base and a medical center, today maned Sheba.
And who in Israel did not hear or knew the name Tel Ha’shomer. Now the name Sheba is world known and for many good reasons.
Today, Sheba Medical Center (https://eng.sheba.co.il/), the largest medical center in the Middle East, stands alone, strong, representing the best of what the many medical fields can offer humanity, the world over.
Since I often attend the Friends of Sheba Medical Center, Tel Ha’shomer (http://www.friendsofsheba.org/) annual gala, in Los Angeles, California, and each time I attend, my appreciation for the center grows, last July, 2016, while visiting Israel, I spent one full day visiting the Center. And what a medical center it is. Accompanied by Ulrike Haen, Assistant Director, I saw, firsthand, the exceptionalism of this medical center.
This year supporters, veteran and new, got together in the annual fundraising gala, named Hero Gene, which was dedicated to raise the funds needed for the MSR center. The gala, hosted by actor Jason Alexander, chaired by Gina Raphael and Jeffrey Gross, held at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Beverly Hills, California, was studded with 700 supporting guests, among them Professor Yitzhak Kreiss, the new Sheba Center’s Director General, Director General emeritus Professor Mordechai Shani, recipient of the Israel Prize in 2009 now serving as head of the Research and Development Foundation for Sheba, Professor Amitai Ziv the head of the MSR department, Dr. Lior Ungar, a neurosurgeon and his patient Heni Avitan, who, under his scalpel underwent successfully a complicated brain surgery, honored Arnon Adar with the inaugural Professor Mordechai Shani Lifetime Achievement Award and Hadar Greenberg Almog with Laurel of Leadership.
So why support Sheba Medical Center?
We all agree that health is the most important component of human being’s existence. Without health life could be rather unpleasant. My late mother used to say that health is the most important gift one can have that allows a person to enjoy life.
And that is what Sheba Medical Center does, provides healing and cures to the sick so they can enjoy life.
One can say that an optimist and a pessimist die the same way but they go through life differently. The optimist with hope and happiness, the pessimist with negativity. Sheba Medical Center provides optimism to life.
In Israel, a country that provides innovations in science, technology and arts, in many fields, inter alia, medicines and medical treatment, Sheba Medical Center, born and grew together with the state of Israel, embodies the best of Israel and offers global impact.
In the modern version of the doctor’s Hippocratic Oath it states:
”I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
“I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
“I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
“I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
“If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.“
And that is what Sheba Medical Center all about. It offers the best medical treatments, engulfs vision and continuity. By the year 2050 Sheba will offer the most advanced care and breathtaking innovations, as well as prepare the next generation medical team.
While Sheba Medical Center is the most comprehensive medical center in Israel, 10,000 miles away, in California, people choose it as their pride and joy cause. In this gala these supporters recognized the world renowned work of Sheba, its cutting edge medical therapy and its way of healing the body and spirit.
The goal of Sheba Medical Center is to have world impact, which it is already enjoying but by far not enough. Investing in Sheba is investing in the entire world’s health future.
Remember, to err is human; improvement and growth from error is divine and an amazing medicine. That brings me back to the top of the article and Sheba’s MSR Center. $2.2 million dollars were raise in this gala, to include $1 million donated by the Younes & Soraya Nazarian Family Foundation.
The tradition of the Judeo-Christian community is to pass the baton to the next generation, in order to continue past generation’s generosity tradition, which makes the world a better place to live for every person living in it. I, for one, am calling the readers to join in this path and a good place to start is supporting Sheba Medical Center, in Israel.