By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICHHaifa’s Rambam Medical Center(photo credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/RAMBAM MEDICAL CENTER)
The late Dr. Michael Gilboa, a retired ophthalmologist who worked at the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, has continued to give to patients even after his death.The senior eye doctor at Rambam Medical Center, who treated thousands of patients until his retirement a few years ago, died last week.But he insisted that when he was gone, his two corneas be removed and transplanted into patients who suffered from eye diseases that put their vision in danger.Gilboa served until his retirement as director of the Oculoplastic Unit at Rambam’s ophthalmology department, which combines ophthalmology and plastic surgery and also deals with damage to the eye socket bones.“After saving the sight of countless patients during his work as an ophthalmologist for more than 40 years, Dr. Gilboa continued to save the eyes of those in need even after his death,” eulogized Prof. Yitzhak Biran, a colleague and a member of the department. “We salute the nobility of a person who was always committed to saving the eyes of those who need it. In his death, as in his life, his hand was always extended to give rather than to take.”Gilboa did his residency in ophthalmology at Rambam in the 1960s and worked in other hospitals in the North, including Tiberias, Safed and Nahariya. At the end of the 1980s, he returned to Rambam to manage the Oculoplastic Unit.