TAU conference to teach int’l medical students about Israel
StandWithUs-organized program to explore Israeli medical aid.
By ALYX RIMBERGStandWithUs group 311(photo credit: Michael Dickson)
Sixty-five foreign medical students will come to Tel Aviv University on Sunday to learn about Israeli humanitarian aid efforts across the globe.The four-day Humanitarian Medical Conference, organized by 20 TAU students who have fellowships from the StandWithUs public diplomacy leadership program, will explore the trials and tribulations of Israeli medical aid.Eleanor Fuks, a student spearheading the conference, said last week that it would help make known the ingenuity of new Israeli medical practices and might alter the world’s view of Israeli medicine.The goal of this conference is to let people know that Israel has a working humanitarian aid program.Fuks described herself and the other conference organizers as “20 students who are determined to show those abroad all that is not shown about Israeli medical advancements.”The conference will include panel discussions on subjects such as cutting edge technology, Israeli human aid resources abroad, casualties experienced by Magen David Adom personnel during the second intifada, and ethics.The Medical Innovations panel will be led by Prof. Arie Orenstein, the director of the Plastic Surgery Department and of Advanced Technology Center at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, and Prof. Anat Loewenstein, a member of the board of directors of the Yokne’am-based Given Imaging medical technology company.Given Imaging invented the PillCam, a pill with a camera in its core to allow inner body imaging that is used all over the world.Col. Dr. Itzik Kreis, who was head of IDF’s field hospital in Haiti after January’s earthquake, will lead the Humanitarian Aid panel.The Israeli field hospital was the only one with an ethics panel.
Participants at the Humanitarian Medical Conference will also have the opportunity to cooperate with IDF personnel in a workshop. It will teach the students how to participate in a humanitarian aid mission and how to build a field hospital.The conference’s ethics panel will facilitate discussion of what one needs to know when working in an area prone to terrorist attacks. Prof. Asa Kasher, author of the IDF’s Code of Conduct, and Prof. Abraham Rivkind, head of the general surgery department and trauma unit at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem’s Ein Karem, will lead this panel.On Monday, all participants will visit Hadassah Hospital.At the cardiology unit, they will be introduced to Lev Hashalom, a medical aid project catering to Palestinians.Representatives of Save A Child’s Heart, located in Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, will also host conference participants.The medical students will visit the facilities where children stay before their operations, and the recovery room.Save A Child’s Heart treats youngsters from around the world.Amos Geva, a university spokesman for the conference, says its goals are twofold.“Our first concern is that the participants receive professional knowledge from our program.And through their newly acquired knowledge they will discover recent Israeli advancements.”
