Israel faces a critical medical famine in from five to ten years because of the present lack of facilities for training and teaching young doctors in Israel, it was stated at a press conference here today by Dr. Leo M. Davidoff, clinical professor of neurosurgery at New York University-Post Graduate Medical School, following his return from Israel where he headed a 14-man medical teaching mission sponsored by the Unitarian Service Committee and the World Health Organization of the United Nations. The mission was sent at the request of the Israeli Government.
According to Dr. Davidoff, the solution to the problem is to get the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical School in Jerusalem in complete operation as soon as possible. “At present,” he stated, “the urgent demands of a mushrooming country and the scarcity of funds, building material and equipment has prevented the University from maintaining a program of medical study in all except clinical training for upper class students.
“This present stop-gap measure of clinical training for medical students who have already had their early medical schooling in other countries will never be sufficient for producing the thousands of qualified medical practitioners that Israel needs if it is to survive as a healthy state,” he said.
Simultaneously with the medical teaching mission, U.S.C. and W.H.O. sent to Israel a public health mission headed by Dr. Karl Evang, Director-General of Health in Norway, who acted as vice-chairman of the overall mission.
The purpose of the missions was to act as consultants to the Ministry of Health and to provide an opportunity for the exchange of information on latest developments in the medical sciences between local doctors and foreign experts. In addition to neurosurgery and public health, fields represented included anesthesiology, biochemistry, epidemiology, internal medicine, pathology, pediatrics, physiology and pharmacology, psychiatry, radiology, thoracic surgery and general surgery, orthopedic surgery and sanitary engineering.
Through the Ministry of Health, the mission presented to medical training centers in Israel $10,000 worth of special equipment for research and training of doctors. American pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors contributed new and rare Irugs for demonstrations, and American publishers donated copies of some of their latest medical text books.
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