Soroka hospital in Beersheba to get NIS 30 million upgrade

New facilities were made possible with donation from the late businessman Sami Ofer.

By JUDY SEIGEL-ITZKOVICH
Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
After four years of planning and construction, a new general intensive care department and cardiothoracic surgery department opened in Beersheba’s growing Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba.
The new facilities, built and equipped at an international standard, were made possible with a NIS 30 million donation from the late businessman Sami Ofer.
The departments occupy more than 3,000 square meters, almost twice the area that the previous departments occupied.
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews headed by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein contributed half a million dollars for new medical equipment, while the hospital’s friends organization donated an additional NIS 2.5 million.
Minister for the Development of the Negev and Galilee Silvan Shalom, hospital director-general Ehud Davidson, cardiothoracic surgery department head Prof. Gideon Sahar, head of the general intensive care unit Dr. Motti Klein and others attended the ceremony.
Shalom noted that the impressive new facilities are part of an effort to improve significantly healthcare in the Negev and promote high-level medical research in the periphery.
A new CT scanner has already been purchased by his ministry, which also helped establish a cancer research center at Soroka.