Hadassah Medical Organization to Send Teams to African Countries

The two-day Hadassah mid-winter conference, attended by 200 leaders of the organization, concluded its sessions today with an announcement that the Hadassah Medical Organization in Israel will send special medical teams to African countries to help fight disease to meet problems of public health there.

The announcement was made by Dr, Kalman J. Mann, director-general of the medical organization; He said that as a result of the survey of eye diseases in Tanganyika, Kenya and Ethiopia carried out last month by Prof; I. C. Michelson, of the Hadassah Medical Organization, two special teams of opthalmologists are now being readied for special missions to Tanganyika and Ethiopia; Dr. Mann also announced that an eye hospital would be established in Tanganyika along lines similar to one already initiated at Monrovia, Liberia which is staffed by a Hadassah team.

For Ethiopia, Dr. Mann said, a special program for the treatment of eye diseases and for research in the treatment of trachoma will be launched, and a Hadassah team will leave for Addis Ababa shortly to inaugurate and supervise the undertaking. He added that physicians and nurses from Tanganyika and Ethiopia will be accepted for special training within the framework of the Hadassah Medical Organization in Israel; This, he noted, will be in addition to “on-the-spot training” medical personnel will be receiving in their respective countries from Hadassah teams assigned to special missions there. Dr. Mann also disclosed that Dr. Michael Davies, of Hadassah’s Department of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene, was named coordinator of medical services in Liberia.

$231, 000 IN U. S. GRANTS AWARDED TO HADASSAH SCIENTISTS IN TWO MONTHS

Dr. Mann reported that 17 students from nine Afro-Asian countries have begun medical studies at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School; The 17 men and one woman–ranging in age from 18 to 24 years–come from Rhodesia, Liberia, Sierre Leone, Ethiopia, Kenya, Basutoland, Tanganyika, Nigeria and Nepal.

Mrs. Nathan D. Perlman, national chairman of the Hadassah Medical Organization Committee in the United States, told the conference that Hadassah scientists have been awarded within two months special research grants totaling $231,800 from the United States National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md., and the Leukemia Research Foundation, Chicago, Ill; She said the largest grant, $150, 000, was given by the National Institutes of Health to Dr. J. J. Groen, head of Hadassah’s Department of Internal Medicine and Professor of Medicine at the Hebrew University-Hadassah-Medical School, and Dr. Fritz Dreyfus, chief physician of the Department and associate professor of medicine at the Medical School.

A group of 175 leaders of Hadassah will leave tonight by plane for Israel to inaugurate a series of events–running through 1962–to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of Hadassah; The Hadassah Golden Jubilee Mission to Israel is being headed by Mrs; Samuel W. Halprin, former national president of Hadassah, who is also national chairman of Hadassahs 50th Anniversary Committee; The Mission will return to the United States February 8.