Kaplan Hospital gets new children’s wing

Ashdod lays cornerstone for general facility.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
children's wing at kaplan hospital (photo credit: Courtesy Kaplan Medical Center)
children's wing at kaplan hospital
(photo credit: Courtesy Kaplan Medical Center)
Two important medical facilities were launched on Monday – a children’s hospital at Rehovot’s Kaplan Medical Center opened and the cornerstone was laid at an Ashdod hospital to be opened in five years.
Both sites are within shooting range of Grad rockets from Gaza. The four-story children’s wing has been built to very high standards, medically, aesthetically and defensively, with reinforcement, generators and air filtration.
Children in the wards throughout the building’s 9,000 square meters of space may communicate with the medical staff, order lunch and participate in classes via advanced multimedia equipment at their bedside. Only two beds are in each room. The original hospital building was constructed in metalwalled huts in 1953. A major donation from the Legacy Foundation to Kaplan’s owner, Clalit Health Services, made the building possible.
Prime Minister and formally Health Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent his greetings to management, noting that 700,000 residents in the area will be served by the facility in times of quiet and in emergency. Hospital director Dr. Ya’acov Yahav said the children’s building is a “revolution” in pediatric medicine under one roof.
Meanwhile, the port city of Ashdod had a glimpse of what is due to become it’s first hospital, which in five years will serve an area population of 300,000. The public hospital will be owned and run by the private Assuta Medical Centers, which has been allowed by the government to offer certain private medical services there as well. It will cost Assuta NIS 650 million and have 300 inpatient beds.
Assuta chairman Prof. Yehoshua Shemer, directorgeneral Dr. Eitan Hai-Am, Ashdod Mayor Yehiel Lasry and others laid the cornerstone. Shemer, a former Health Ministry director-general, said Ashdod will have the most advanced hospital in the country when it opens. Lasry said some 1,000 residents will have jobs at the hospital, which will be university affiliated. Rahel Shmueli, a lawyer, is director- general of the planned hospital.