Israel Active

Irene Pollin, founder and chairman of Sister to Sister, announced her donation at the 100th anniversary celebration of the Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organization of America in Jerusalem. The new cardiovascular wellness institute will counter heart disease - the leading cause of death among women.

The University of Haifa’s tower and the Neve Nof tower on the boardwalk of Bat Yam – the tallest residential building in Israel – were bathed in pink light to remind the public of breast cancer awareness month.

Hatzalah paramedic Arie Jaffe had just finished reading the Torah to celebrate his forthcoming wedding when his emergency (Israeli-made) MIRS device started vibrating. He rushed outside in time to save an elderly congregant who had been run-over whilst crossing the road.

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Here are some of the many examples of the successful developments from Israel’s Weizmann Institute and current research that could potentially eradicate breast cancer in the future.

Ya'ara Saad, a PhD student at Tel Aviv University, has been growing neuron networks from fruit flies in the laboratory. By measuring electrical activity and synapse development, she is building a platform for testing potential treatments for neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

In Harvard’s clinical trial, the NeuroAD system from Israel’s Neuronix not only stopped patients' symptoms from deteriorating, in some cases it actually improved patients' cognitive performance to a greater extent than what is currently available with approved medications.

I’ve reported many of the successful operations performed at Israel’s Save A Child’s Heart organisation on Palestinian Arabs and African children. Here, for the medical community, is an example of the kind of operation that surgeons perform at Wolfson Medical Centre in Holon.

Israel’s NLT Spine develops products for Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery (MISS) and has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its eSPIN powered discectomy system. It is for patients with degenerative disc disease (DDD) and already in use in Europe.

United Hatzalah’s motorcycle paramedics carried a very unusual person recently – UK Ambassador Matthew Gould. “I wanted to see for myself the work the volunteers of United Hatzalah are doing,” said Gould. “Thanks to their ambucycles, they move fast, and their speed saves lives.”

At Israel’s recently upgraded Ariel University, experiments with sub-millimetre band radiation have proved effective at destroying the DNA of targeted lung cancer tumours. Lung cancer is extremely resistant to chemotherapy and aggressive radiation therapy would damage healthy cells.