Sixty-five foreign medical students will come to Tel Aviv University on Sunday
to learn about Israeli humanitarian aid efforts across the globe.
The
four-day Humanitarian Medical Conference, organized by 20 TAU students who have
fellowships from the StandWithUs public diplomacy leadership program, will
explore the trials and tribulations of Israeli medical aid.
Eleanor Fuks,
a student spearheading the conference, said last week that it would help make
known the ingenuity of new Israeli medical practices and might alter the world’s
view of Israeli medicine.
The goal of this conference is to let people
know that Israel has a working humanitarian aid program.
Fuks described
herself and the other conference organizers as “20 students who are determined
to show those abroad all that is not shown about Israeli medical
advancements.”
The conference will include panel discussions on subjects
such as cutting edge technology, Israeli human aid resources abroad, casualties
experienced by Magen David Adom personnel during the second intifada, and
ethics.
The Medical Innovations panel will be led by Prof. Arie
Orenstein, the director of the Plastic Surgery Department and of Advanced
Technology Center at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, and Prof. Anat
Loewenstein, a member of the board of directors of the Yokne’am-based Given
Imaging medical technology company.
Given Imaging invented the PillCam, a
pill with a camera in its core to allow inner body imaging that is used all over
the world.
Col. Dr. Itzik Kreis, who was head of IDF’s field hospital in
Haiti after January’s earthquake, will lead the Humanitarian Aid
panel.
The Israeli field hospital was the only one with an ethics
panel.
Participants at the Humanitarian Medical Conference will also have
the opportunity to cooperate with IDF personnel in a workshop. It will teach the
students how to participate in a humanitarian aid mission and how to build a
field hospital.
The conference’s ethics panel will facilitate discussion
of what one needs to know when working in an area prone to terrorist attacks.
Prof. Asa Kasher, author of the IDF’s Code of Conduct, and Prof. Abraham
Rivkind, head of the general surgery department and trauma unit at Hadassah
University Hospital in Jerusalem’s Ein Karem, will lead this panel.
On
Monday, all participants will visit Hadassah Hospital.
At the cardiology
unit, they will be introduced to Lev Hashalom, a medical aid project catering to
Palestinians.
Representatives of Save A Child’s Heart, located in Wolfson
Medical Center in Holon, will also host conference participants.
The
medical students will visit the facilities where children stay before their
operations, and the recovery room.
Save A Child’s Heart treats youngsters
from around the world.
Amos Geva, a university spokesman for the
conference, says its goals are twofold.
“Our first concern is that the
participants receive professional knowledge from our program.
And through
their newly acquired knowledge they will discover recent Israeli
advancements.”