Israel Active

Israel is ranked fifth in terms of men's average life expectancy, at 80.6 years - after Switzerland, Iceland, Australia, and Sweden. Israeli women's life expectancy is ranked ninth globally, at 84.3 years.

This is a very informative look at Israel's medical device sector with 725 medical device companies.

One of Barbara Sofer’s 68 reasons to love Israel includes this amazing report of how doctors at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center managed to save the life of Mohamed - a Palestinian Arab toddler who fell into a vat of boiling jam.

Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have found new RNA-control switches (“ribo-switches) for genes encoding antibiotic resistance and discovered that these switches are actually “turned on” by the antibiotics themselves.  The switches could be turned off by future treatments.

No newborn with a heart defect like that of Cypriot baby Vassilios had ever survived. But Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center was willing to treat him.  After an anxious journey to Israel, Hadassah surgeons achieved the “impossible” and after 10 days Vassilios and his happy parents returned to Cyprus.

Palestinian Arab student Sara al Katzroy collapsed whilst jogging.  She was brought from Jericho hospital to Jerusalem where Hadassah doctors used a Molecular Adsorbent Recirculation System (MARS) to save her liver.  Sara now wants to become a nurse.

Two people have regained their eyesight after receiving the corneas of the late former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who died March 17 after a long battle with cancer.  Avraham Gian, 81, and an unnamed 70-year-old woman received the corneas at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky (Ichilov) Hospital.

UK medical journal The Lancet reported the first implants of the interatrial shunts from Israel’s V-Wave .  In less than 1 hour, each of 10 Canadian patients suffering poor left ventricular function received new implants and were discharged home next morning.

Doctors at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem removed a tumor from the spine of a 3-year-old Palestinian Arab boy from Gaza to prevent him from becoming paralyzed.  The unique six-hour surgery involved stretching the boy’s spine and removing a vertebra. =

The US FDA has approved the DermaCompare melanoma (skin cancer) diagnosis system developed by Israel’s Emerald Medical (formally DermaCare).  The smartphone app enables tele-dermatology to detect possible melanomas and save lives.