IMA: Lack of neonatologists reaches acute level

In the past 20 years, the number of Israeli births has risen by half to 160,000 a year, but the number of neonatologists is only 100 – just 65 percent of the number needed.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
baby with mother 311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
baby with mother 311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
The Israel Medical Association warns that hospitals in both the periphery and the center of the country are closing their premature infant units due to the lack of specialists in neonatology (doctors who treat newborns, especially premature ones).
In the past 20 years, the number of Israeli births has risen by half to 160,000 a year, but the number of neonatologists is only 100 – just 65 percent of the number needed to fill the required job slots.
Dr. Shmuel Zangen, head of the department for special care of neonates and premature babies at Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center and head of the Israel Neonatology Society, said that over 40 of the 100 neonatologists will retire in the coming decade.
Neonatology is not a popular field because it is very demanding around the clock and does not offer the perks of private practice.
About half of all newborns need the intervention of a neonatologist, said Zangen, but there isn’t enough manpower to treat them properly. Thus on-duty pediatricians without a specialty in neonatology are forced to treat not only their regular patients but also premature babies.
In government hospitals in the periphery, neonatal units are on the verge of collapse, said Dr. Tzaki Ziv-Ner, chairman of the Government Hospitals Association. In Western Galilee Government Hospital in Nahariya, for example, there are only two neonatologists in charge of 6,000 deliveries a year. In the past few months, it has had to call in neonatologists from other state hospitals to help out, said Ziv-Ner.
“Without immediate intervention by the Health and Finance Ministries, there is a real danger that neonatal units in peripheral hospitals will shut down, and the only solution for premature babies at risk will be to rush them to hospitals in the center of the country,” he warned. “This would bring the risk to premature babies in the central region as well.”
IMA chairman Dr. Leonid Eidelman said that the manpower standards forneonatologists were set way back in 1985, even though the practice ofneonatology has become much more demanding since then.
He said that neonatology has already been recognized by the governmentas a “medical sub-specialty in acute stress,” but that the incentivesgiven to young pediatricians are not yet significant enough to make itattractive. These must be boosted, he concluded, by the hospitals andthe Finance and Health Ministries, especially in the periphery, “beforea tragedy occurs.”
The Health Ministry commented that it was aware of the shortage ofneonatologists, and that incentive pay is given to pediatricians who goto study the field.
“But not every delivery requires a neonatologist – only when apremature baby is expected. “The ministry will continue to initiatediscussions with the Treasury for raising the number of neonatologistsin general and in the periphery in particular,” the ministryspokeswoman said.