Deputy health minister says his ministry’s director-general approved professor's “appointment” to temporary position of “special adviser” and “project manager.”
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICHProf. Shlomo Mor-Yosef 311(photo credit: Judy Siegel-Itzkovich)
Within minutes of an official announcement by Deputy Health Minister Ya’acov Litzman on Thursday that he had appointed Prof. Shlomo Mor-Yosef as his “special adviser” and “project manager” to resolve the doctors’ dispute, Mor-Yosef declared that he had never agreed to it.Litzman – who said he had consulted first with Prime Minister and formal Health Minister Binyamin Netanyahu – said that his ministry’s director-general, Prof. Ronni Gamzu, had approved Mor-Yosef’s “appointment” to the temporary position and that Mor-Yosef would “report directly” to Litzman.But the highly respected medical administrator, who only a few weeks ago completed an 11-year-term as head of the Hadassah Medical Organization, immediately issued a statement contradicting Litzman and saying that he had “no intention” of serving as his special adviser or project manager – or, for that matter, as director-general of the Health Ministry, which had been rumored. Mor-Yosef expressed “full confidence in Gamzu as director-general.”He declared that a solution to the residents’ demands about work conditions and wages must be found, and that he opposed the residents using the “weapon of mass resignation.” Instead, he called to resolve the crisis by talking and not by force, and to act according to the courts’ decision and observe the law.On Thursday, there were reports that the Treasury wanted to get Gamzu – formerly director of Ichilov Hospital at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center – dismissed from his job because he was allegedly “cooperating with the residents.”
The Health Ministry statement stressed that Gamzu, who has been in his post for 17 months, would continue as ministry director- general and that Litzman rejected attacks on him.Commenting on this, Kadima MK Yoel Hasson charged: “This is part of Netanyahu’s campaign of fear. While he has been in office, the health system has been submerged in one of the worst crises it has known. He has tried to depict the residents as ‘enemies of the people’ and lawbreakers.”Hasson said that “instead of Treasury officials trying to find a solution, they are trying to get Gamzu fired. They would be better off trying to resolve the crisis instead of portraying Gamzu as an ‘enemy of the people.’”
