The Health Ministry has given two Israeli hospitals permission to open liver-transplant centers as soon as possible, while suspending the certification of another.
Permission was granted Wednesday to the Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem and Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikva, which belongs to Kupat Holim, the Histadrut health care agency.
Rambam Hospital in Haifa, which last year became the first and only hospital in Israel licensed to perform the delicate surgery, will no longer do so.
Rambam Hospital shut down its facility earlier this year when the head of its liver-transplant center, American-trained Dr. Yigal Kam, returned to the United States.
Kam, regarded as one of the world’s leading liver-transplant surgeons, will open a transplant center in Denver, Colorado. It was on the strength of his reputation that Rambam Hospital received its original certification.
The hospital’s license has been stamped “frozen” pending the return of Kam, who has officially taken a year’s leave without pay.
Kam had complained of a lack of cooperation from other Israeli hospitals and of the shortage of organ donors, in part due to religious beliefs.
Hadassah and Beilinson hospitals have promised to cooperate in their liver-transplant endeavors. A computer center is being set up at Beilinson to register donors and match their tissues with potential recipients. It will be linked to the Hadassah transplant center.
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