At the opening session of Hadassah’s annual mid-winter conference tonight, the national president will report on the implementation of the $4.85 million United States A.I.D. (Agency for International Development) grant to the Hadassah Medical Organization in Israel. Rose E. Matzkin, in her report to Hadassah’s 200 leaders who are convening at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel through Thursday, notes that all of the grant is spent on dollar purchases in the United States. The grant was made in 1970 under the provisions of Section 214 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1967 dealing with schools and hospitals.
Mrs. Matzkin says that the funds are being used for the rehabilitation of the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, to establish the new Moshe Sharett Cancer Institute, and to equip the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center at Ein Karem with the latest laboratory equipment. Mechanical and electrical equipment valued at $2.5 million is being installed at the Mount Scopus Hospital, which had been cut off from Israel after 1948 and was recovered in 1967 in a state of utter disrepair.
At the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Ein Karem, purchases are valued at $2.3 million. This includes dental, X-ray and cardio-vascular equipment, computers, ultracentrifuge, amino-acid analyzers, as well as equipment for the new Cancer Institute. This institute will provide better and wider amenities for cancer care, research, early diagnosis, treatment and early rehabilitation of cancer patients. It will be the major cancer center for the Middle East–serving patients from Europe, Asia and Africa as well as Israel.
Mrs. Matzkin notes that it is a condition of the grant that all the money be spent on dollar purchases in the U.S. for American equipment. Hence the grant benefits American industry. Hadassah has sent 450 physicians to the United States for post-graduate training, almost all of whom have returned to the staff of Hadassah or to other Israeli hospitals. These doctors have been taught the American way of medicine, using techniques and equipment at present in use in the United States. They are, therefore, familiar with the new equipment provided by the A.I.D. funds.
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