US billionaire's donation will help raise standards of Negev pediatric medicine.
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICHjp.services2(photo credit: )
Haim Saban, the Israeli-American billionaire who first made his fortune from the Power Rangers cartoon characters, has donated $14 million towards the completion of an ultramodern children's hospital and upgrading delivery rooms on the campus of the Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba.
The hospital will raise the standards of pediatric medicine in the Negev, where Soroka is the sole medical center.
The Clalit Health Services-owned medical center said Sunday that Saban visited the medical center last week to see the construction site. The hospital, which will incorporate Soroka's existing pediatric wards, will be named for his family. Of the $14m., $6m. of Saban's fortune has been donated by the Saban Foundation to complete luxurious delivery rooms in the medical center's obstetrics department, which is the busiest in the country.
Saban and his wife Dr. Cheryl Saban are
already benefactors of a children's hospital in Los Angeles that has a cooperation agreement with Soroka.
"You are doing a wonderful job," Saban told Soroka director-general Dr. Eitan Hai-Am. "We will continue to support you and help you to advance. The children of the Negev deserve the highest-quality medical care, as is given in Soroka, under the best conditions and standards available - and this we will accomplish together."
Hai-Am thanked the Saban family and promised that Soroka will fill the new facility with the content they desire. The Saban Family Children's Hospital will have an emergency room, new pediatric intensive are unit, child-friendly wards and an impressive lobby, Hai-Am said.
