Iranian woman's life saved via e-mail advice from Israel

Doctor in Iran consults Kaplan Medical Center's Dr. Adi Weissbuch, preventing complications that would have risked pregnant woman’s life.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Dr Avi Weissbuch 311 (photo credit: Courtesy Kaplan Medical Center)
Dr Avi Weissbuch 311
(photo credit: Courtesy Kaplan Medical Center)
Although the leaders of Iran regard Israel as a Satan to be destroyed by nuclear weapons, Israeli medicine is regarded as excellent by some Iranian doctors, including one who consulted a senior physician at Kaplan Medical Center and prevented complications that would have risked a pregnant woman’s life.
Dr. Adi Weissbuch of the unit for at-risk pregnancies at the Rehovot hospital was recently contacted with urgency via e-mail by a female doctor who identified herself as “NN” from an Iranian-university hospital.
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She had read a comprehensive article published in an international medical journal in which Weissbuch wrote about a rare genetic complication of pregnancy and supplied his e-mail address at the bottom.
Consultation was urgent, the Iranian doctor wrote, because according to Islamic law, abortion is forbidden after the 18th week of pregnancy, and her patient was already in her 16th week. She sent the Kaplan physician a copy of lab results and asked his opinion.
Weissbuch wrote back that on the basis of the data, there was very little chance that the woman would have a healthy baby and that delivering the baby would endanger her life. The Rehovot doctor had discussed a very similar case in his article.
After receiving the information, the Iranian doctor advised the woman to undergo an abortion immediately, and she did so.
Weissbuch said that he had received numerous requests for medical help via email from various parts of the world, but that this was the first time one had come from Iran.
“For me as a doctor, caring for patients is not dependent on nationality, gender or religion. We are morally bound to give proper treatment and advice to whoever needs it. From my side, of course all of my correspondence with the Iranian physician mentioned ‘The State of Israel’ under my full name, but she was not dissuaded by this fact,” he said.