(JTA) — Joan and Sanford Weill of New York have committed $10 million to Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center to expand the children’s cancer ward and facilitate its treatment of Palestinian children.
The funds, including a contribution from the Weill Family Foundation, will merge Rambam’s pediatric hematology-oncology department and its bone marrow transplant unit into a single entity, said a statement from American Friends of Rambam.
The separate floor at the Rambam’s Ruth Rappaport Children’s Hospital will "include inpatient and outpatient facilities, classrooms, playrooms, and age-appropriate visitors’ corners," the statement said.
The funding also will establish the Weill Israeli-Palestinian Friendship Center, which will "make available residential hostel facilities to patients’ families" and "give advanced medical training to Palestinian residents, fellows and nursing staff."
Promoting peace underscored the mission for the couple.
"Sandy and I have witnessed the extraordinary healing that Rambam offers on an individual level, and we are excited that our involvement will help promote that healing on a regional level in the Middle East as well," Joan Weill said in a statement.
Sanford Weill is the former chairman of Citigroup.
