PM receives same treatment as others

Hadassah president: Everyone is treated according to his needs.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
sharon hospital out 298 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
sharon hospital out 298
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [file])
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is getting the "same outstanding treatment" available to any patient at the neurosurgery intensive care unit at Hadassah-University Hospital in Jerusalem's Ein Kerem, according to June Walker, president of the Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization of America (HWZOA). "Everyone gets the same treatment according to his needs," she told The Jerusalem Post Monday. The only difference with the prime minister is that because of his position, he needs special security and privacy, she added. "But he is in a regular ward, at the end of the intensive care unit that is blocked off. He hasn't undergone more operations that others would have in the same situation and no special equipment. All ventilators in the unit are state of the art, which if they detect negative pressure from the patient, allow him to breathe on his own," Walker said. "Hadassah is very proud that we have been able to help create hospitals that provide such high-level care." When the Ein Kerem hospital's new emergency medicine center was being planned, the government demanded that it be bomb-proof and self-sufficient. It was Hadassah, said Walker, that voluntarily suggested building a special unit in the trauma center to receive VIPs in an emergency and then move them to hospital departments for treatment. Walker, who has been president since 2003, said she flew in from New York on Friday to express her organization's "confidence in our medical staff and support for the Sharon family. I met [his son] Omri and some other members of the family outside the unit." The HWZOA president said she chose not to go in to see Sharon, because she felt he deserved his privacy and did not want to intrude. Americans and people around the world are naturally interested in Sharon's health, said Walker. "He is a giant of the Israeli and the Jewish people who has dedicated his life to them." Asked about criticism from a variety of doctors that Sharon was allegedly "overtreated" with blood thinners at the hospital after his mild stroke, and that these triggered his second stroke, Walker said it was "easy to second guess," but that Hadassah's world-class physicians are the ones who have Sharon's medical file in their hands.