Research in Israel has produced important medical advances for Egypt, it was reported at the third annual conference on Science and Technology in Israel and the Middle East. The conference was held this weekend under the auspices of the American Technion Society.
Michael Doron, representative for research programs in Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s office, told the 400 delegates attending the two-day parley at the Hotel Astor that one of Israel’s top virologists, several years ago, had done important research in the tropical disease known as “West Nile Fever.” This disease, he said, was a health problem in Israel, and is “a major health problem for one of our neighbors, through which the Nile River flows.”
An Israel research team received a grant from one of the leading American research foundations to study the “epidemiology of West Nile Fever” and the resulting study was described by the foundation as “contributing greatly to understanding the clinical aspects of the disease.” Mr. Doron did not elaborate, but presumed that the research furthered in Israel was made available, through the American foundation, to Egypt and other Middle East countries where the West Nile Fever poses a health problem.
A total of 2,500 scientists are now working in 23 institutions throughout Israel conducting both basic and applied research, Mr. Doron reported. He said that this figure does not include hospital laboratories, laboratories of large industrial plants, a number of agricultural experimental stations, and Israel’s defense apparatus. Twenty percent of all scientific research efforts under way in Israel are conducted at the Technion, Mr. Doron added.
Israel’s engineers and technicians are working in 28 African and Asian nations, extending the type of technical assistance that benefited Israel’s rapid economic independence in the last decade, it was reported at the conference by Benjamin Cooper, chairman of the sessions, and vice-president of the American Technion Society. He told the assembled delegates that “engineers make the best diplomats in this age of technology.”
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