Ex-MK dies after he forgets to switch on power to artificial heart

Imri Ron died on Sunday at the age of 77 in the parking lot of Emek Medical Center in Afula.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH, LAHAV HARKOV
Former MK Imri Ron 370 (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Former MK Imri Ron 370
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Former Labor Alignment MK Imri Ron died on Sunday at the age of 77 in the parking lot of Emek Medical Center in Afula from a lack of power supply to his artificial heart. Ron forgot to switch back the power supply after he finished charging the device on his car’s cigarette lighter outlet.
The artificial heart was implanted at Haifa’s Carmel Government Hospital three years ago – making his the country’s oldest survivor with such a device – he momentarily forgot to move the switch and the heart didn’t work. A rescue team from the hospital got his heart to start beating again, but it failed due to the lack of electricity to run it, the hospital said about the tragedy.
“He could have lived with the heart for years more,” a spokeswoman for Emek Hospital said.
During his army service, Ron parachuted into the Mitla Pass in 1956 as a platoon commander. He was a company commander in the Six Day War, a deputy battalion commander in the Yom Kippur War and a staff officer in the Paratroop Brigade in the First Lebanon War.
Ron became secretary of the Kibbutz Artzi movement, which is associated with the socialist-Zionist youth group Hashomer Hatzair, in 1973. In 1978, after then-MK Haim Tzadok resigned, he became an MK on the Alignment list, and was a member of the Ninth and 10th Knessets, until 1984.