In an interview for The Jerusalem Post’s special Rosh Hashanah magazine, our President and Global CEO, Yael Eckstein, speaks about The Fellowship’s major projects in the last year:
The primary focus of IFCJ’s activities is, of course, in Israel, and Eckstein reports that The Fellowship has identified the need to provide increased assistance to hospitals throughout the country. “As technology advances, as budgets are under more pressure because of the war, with so much money going to security, hospitals are getting less funding, while the needs are getting higher. The Fellowship realized that we wanted to help hospitals in many ways directly connected to the security situation.”
In July, IFCJ donated $1 million to modernize the trauma and emergency medicine department at Nazareth Hospital, which treats approximately 100,000 patients each year. “In Israel, we don’t decide who’s receiving aid by religion or religious affiliation or even location.” Says Eckstein. “We go according to need.”
Previously, she explains, the trauma and emergency medicine department at Nazareth would first diagnose patients, and only then transport them to specific sections of the hospital for treatment, which often took time and ended in death. “The center there has now been upgraded,” she reports, “so that patients can receive all of their treatment in the trauma center. They can even perform surgery in the emergency room trauma center. You have all the X-rays, all the CTs, all the heart monitors; everything you could need is there. In one place, you get the diagnosis immediately, instead of taking time that costs lives.” In February of this year, the IFCJ upgraded the Fortified Trauma Center at Shaare Zedek Medical Center with the same capabilities.
Discussing the significance of the improvements that The Fellowship sponsored at the Nazareth Hospital EMMS, Eckstein says, “It’s amazing to see the people of Nazareth who have been living here for generations and how much they believe in bridge building, and how they believe in helping anyone who comes through their doors. These are Christian Israeli doctors and workers who were going with full emotion through all the victims of terror that they treated – when a missile struck a house, and they treated those inside. They felt connected from the first second until today, as if they were treating their own children. Many times hospitals in the periphery are neglected and have lower budgets. But in a way, they are even more important because there are fewer hospitals in the periphery than in the center, and they need to be upgraded to save lives.