Three years of planning went into the Centennial Convention that brought about 2,000 of the 330,000 members of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, to Israel in October to celebrate the global charitable organization’s 100th anniversary.

 

Convention chairwoman Miki Schulman worked for the past three years to plan a week where the delegates could explore projects at the two world-renowned Hadassah hospitals and affiliated research labs and schools, which are open to employees, patients and students of every ethnic and religious background.

 

In fact, the global donor-supported organization earned a 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nomination for its ongoing initiatives to use medicine as a bridge to peace.

 

The visitors had a day of sessions on Hadassah’s role in education and immigration absorption, held at the Hadassah Neurim Youth Village run in partnership with the Jewish National Fund. Hadassah has two additional youth villages, Meir Shfeya and Ramat Hadassah Szold for youth at risk.

 

“This is a celebration of Hadassah’s first 100 years and the launch of its next 100 years,” says Schulman, “so it was important to the leadership to make sure that our members and delegates all had at least a taste of each of the areas in which we are involved in Israel, because this is really who we are and what we have been doing for the past 100 years.”

 

The crown of convention week was the dedication of the new 19-story state-of-the-art Sarah Wetsman Davidson Hospital Tower on the Ein Kerem campus, with its interactive Hadassah Heritage Center. Other highlights were the unveiling of a commemorative Israel Postal Service stamp, and the presentation of Hadassah's highest award to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"We're marking 100 years and committing ourselves to the next 100," said Hadassah National President Marcie Natan, who led a festive parade through downtown Jerusalem.

 

Developing and sharing Israeli medical expertise

 

Hadassah was founded on March 3, 1912 by a group of New York women headed by Henrietta Szold, to improve health and education conditions for women and children in the Holy Land. Two nurses were sent to Jerusalem to set up a small public-health clinic for maternity care and to treat the eye disease trachoma, then rampant in the Middle East.

 

Today, more than half the hospital-based research in Israel is conducted through the Hadassah Medical Organization. The Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center at Ein Kerem and the Hadassah University Hospital at Mount Scopus treat more than 1 million patients annually in-house and at 120 outpatient clinics. Together they are the largest employer in Jerusalem outside of the government, with 850 physicians, 1,940 nurses and 1,020 paramedical and support staff.

Hadassah’s work is not confined to Israel. Through its School of Public Health, it conducts a wide variety of training programs for medical personnel and students from the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan, and from about 90 other countries.

 

Hadassah professionals have done volunteer HIV/AIDS education and treatment in Ethiopia and Kazakhastan, and performed eye surgery on hundreds of thousands of needy African patients. Hadassah teamed with the Jerusalem AIDS Project to implement male circumcision for HIV prevention in several African countries, and Hadassah workers taught public health in Katmandu.

“Whenever there’s a need for very specialized medical attention, we are always there because we are experts in so many areas, particularly disaster relief,” says Schulman. Hadassah personnel, working with the government, “can set up field hospitals in four hours and treat scores of patients quickly and efficiently, and we’re familiar with the types of disease that disasters create.”

A Hadassah Ein-Kerem obstetrician delivered the first baby born at the Israeli field hospital in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake (the grateful mother named him Israel) and it was a Hadassah Mount Scopus nurse who showed workers at a Haitian factory how to fashion much-needed surgical screws from simple nails.

 

Since 1960, Hadassah has brought critical care expertise to earthquake-torn Armenia, Turkey and Greece and to tsunami victims in Sri Lanka; and assisted in the recovery effort at the bombed US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania. The government of Panama took Hadassah as a consultant to build a state-of-the-art emergency trauma unit there.

 

 

Clinical and research achievements at Hadassah have gained fame throughout the world. The Hadasit technology transfer company promotes and commercializes the intellectual property and R&D capabilities generated by Hadassah physicians and scientists – including novel therapeutics, diagnostics and devices that have gained global recognition

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In 2004, Hadassah’s bone marrow transplantation and cancer immunotherapy department introduced an innovative treatment for cancer patients who have previously undergone chemo or radiation therapy. The outpatient treatment uses lymphocytes from any donor, with no need for tissue matching, engineered to seek and destroy any remaining cancer cells.

 

In 2005, Hadassah researchers developed a vaccine that significantly strengthens the body's immune system against the autoimmune pathological conditions resulting from HIV infection.

 

With the 2009 launching of the da Vinci surgical robot system, Hadassah joined an elite group of the world's leading hospitals that use this advanced technology. Surgeons at Hadassah were among the first in Israel to begin using this and other minimally invasive surgical methods performed through tiny "keyhole" incisions. 

This year, Hadassah released positive results from the first clinical trial of NurOwn stem-cell therapy for people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The next phase of trials is now in progress.

 

 

In addition to its Jerusalem hospitals, Hadassah early on helped establish hospitals in Safed, Jaffa, Tel Aviv and Tiberius. In 1921, Hadassah opened the first children’s wellness clinic, the forerunner of Israel’s modern “Tipat Chalav” (Drop of Milk) network.

 

In 1939, the Mount Scopus Hadassah University Hospital opened, only to close following the massacre of a convoy of doctors and nurses heading to the hospital during the 1948 War of Independence, after which Jordan had control over the surrounding area for the next 19 years. This northern Jerusalem campus reopened in 1975, but in the meantime the Ein Kerem hospital began operations on the southern outskirts in 1960 and has become the larger of the two hospitals.

In 1970, the organization founded Hadassah College in Jerusalem to help Israel build a skilled manpower pool in the technological, industrial, scientific and economic sectors. Hadassah also took in young immigrants from Europe through Szold’s Youth Aliyah program starting in the 1930s. Ramat Hadassah Youth Village was founded in 1949 to care for child survivors of the Holocaust and children of Yemenite immigrants.

 

 

The new Sarah Wetsman Davidson Hospital Tower officially opened in March after five years of construction. With 14 above-ground floors and five underground, encompassing one million square feet, this has been the largest construction project in Jerusalem. Its protected underground hospital has 20 operating suites and recovery rooms, expected to open in January.

 

Schulman explains that all the medical and surgical departments will move into the tower over the next two years. The original hospital building will be converted into additional research facilities and will continue offering outpatient services in its 17 operating theaters. “That will be tremendous in reducing wait time for services,” she says.

 

As a member of the hospital’s board of directors who has helped plan this new edifice, Schulman was overcome with emotion when she walked into the finished tower in October.

 

“It is absolutely amazing. It took my breath away and brought tears to my eyes,” she says. “The tower is not only bricks and mortar -- it is medical care.”

 

From “100 Years, 100 Highlights”

1964: First double bypass surgery in Israel
1970: First computerized patient and testing management system in Israel.
1975: First four-year nursing degree program in Israel
1977: First successful bone marrow transplant in Israel
1983: First “test tube” baby in Israel
1986: First successful heart transplant; first ambulatory surgery center in Israel
1991: First successful liver transplant in Israel; first trauma unit in Israel
1992: First successful lung transplant in Israel; first Trauma Treatment Center in Israel
2004: First computer-guided hip replacement in the world
2007: First successful freezing of ovaries before chemotherapy treatment
2008: First successful pregnancy using ova genetically tested prior to implantation

 

Hadassah research breakthroughs
From “100 Years, 100 Highlights”

 

1999: Development of proteins for use in treating wounds and tissue reconstruction
2002: Development of influenza vaccines
2003: Development of antibodies to complement skin cancer treatment
2003: Development of fracture treatment and bone-building using stem cells
2004: Development of treatments for diseases of the nervous system
2005: Genetic treatments for cancer, anemia and other genetic diseases
2006: Development of methods of diagnosing precursors of cancerous growths
2006: Treatments developed using umbilical cord blood cells
2007: Development of immunization for Crohn's disease
2008: Development of proteins used in the treatment of stroke damage
2008: Development of technology to improve the quality of MRI imaging
2008: Human stem cells implanted in mice with MS, slowed the progression of the disease
2009: Hospital researchers discover treatment for fatty liver disease
2010: Healthy baby born after frozen ovarian tissue implant
2010: Revolutionary treatment for brain aneurysm
2011: Ministry of Health approves BrainStorm NurOwn for the first clinical trial, at Hadassah, of adult stem-cell therapy for ALS

 

Each year at the two Hadassah medical centers:
- 10,000 babies are born
- 30,000 surgeries are performed
- 130,000 people visit the emergency departments
- 4 million lab tests are done