Hadassah Hospital is Providing Medical Services for West Bank Arabs

The Hadassah Medical Organization has agreed to treat cancer victims among the Arab refugees in Israeli-held territories. Prof. Kalman J. Mann, its director general in Israel, announced today in an address before the 53rd national convention of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization.

Prof. Mann said that the medical organization entered into an agreement with the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), at the request of the Israel Ministry of Health, to provide care for cancer patients on the west bank of the Jordan River–for whom UNRWA is responsible. He said that Hadassah has already ordered a new 35 million volt betatron machine at a cost of $250,000, to handle the new cases. He said that 200 Arab patients from East Jerusalem and the west bank area are now being treated daily at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center at Ein Karem. They comprise about 20 percent of the total number of patients treated in the outpatient department, he added.

Prof. Mann said that “new vistas” of medical education are now being opened to Arab doctors, nurses and paramedical personnel through training and clinical programs being provided for them by the Hadassah Medical Organization.

At a later session of the convention today, Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer, rector of the Seminario Rabinico Latino-Americano in Buenos Aires, urged American Jews to engage in an alliance with “the hundreds of thousands of spiritually and culturally underdeveloped South American Jews” in order to “save them from assimilation.”

Rabbi Meyer said that “North American Jewry is not taking Latin American Jewry seriously enough and the United States Government is not taking Latin America seriously enough.” “There are 850,000 Jews south of the Rio Grande who are desperately in need of intellectual and spiritual leadership,” he said. “All of this in spite of the fact that they live in freedom and relative prosperity.” He added that the “prime danger” facing the 500,000 Jews of Argentina was not anti-Semitism but “Jewish indifference and assimilation.”

At the conclusion of the session, Mrs. Leonard D. Cohen of Westport. Conn., national chairman of the Henrietta Szold Award Committee, presented the 1967 award to Dr. Miachel E. Debakey, noted Texas heart surgeon, in recognition of his “fearless inquiries into the intricate workings of the human heart.”