The Agency for International Development (AID) signed a contract today implementing a grant of $750.000 for Hadassah’s medical work in Israel. Arturo Costantino, director of the program, and Rep. Clarence D. Long (D.Md.), chairman, House Subcommittee on Appropriations on Foreign Operations, participated in signing the agreement with Charlotte Jacobson, Hadassah chairman for Foundations and Grants, who prepared the proposal. Bernice S. Tannenbaum, Hadassah national president, was due to participate but was unable to attend because of illness.
Long said that ” Hadassah is a vital center of medical care, training and research. Every dollar spent increases the quantity and improves the quality of health care provided millions of peoples–regardless of religion and nationality.” Mrs. Jacobson pointed out that last year Hadassah spent about $6 million in the United States for hospital supplies and equipment.
The AID funds are provided for under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 as amended, and will be spent in the United States for the purchase of supplies and equipment to expand facilities devoted to patient care, teaching and research at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Ein Karem and at the Hadassah University Hospital on Mt. Scopus, from which Hadassah was cut off in 1948 and to which access was restored in 1967 after the Six-Day War.
Since 1967 Hadassah had received about $6 million in AID grants which have contributed toward rehabilitation of the Hadassah University Hospital, Mt. Scopus, as a 300-bed regional hospital to service Jewish and Arab populations of easterm Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza area; and the Moshe Sharett Institute of Oncology, housed in the Siegfried and lrma Ullmann Building for Cancer and Allied Diseases at Ein Karem, which will open soon. The Institute will provide the most comprehensive cancer diagnosis and treatment between Rome and Tokyo, in addition to research and teaching programs.
NEED FOR EXPANSION EXPLAINED
Mrs. Jacobson explained that expansion of the Medical Center has been necessary because as the population of Jerusalem has increased by at least 30 percent, the varieties of medical care have multiplied and the need for additional trained medical personnel and research must be met.
A special certificate, illuminated with one of the famed Chagall windows in the synagogue at Ein Karem, was presented to Long by Mrs. Jacobson, who was president when the Mr. Scopus hospital was returned to Hadassah and who subsequently, as Hadassah Medical Organization and Building and Development chairman, has been responsible for a decade of development in which Hadassah has spent over $50 million.
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