33 Operations in Four Days

Rambam orthopedist took part in a surgical "marathon" in Ecuador: within four days the surgeons performed 33 operations, most of them on children


A senior Rambam orthopedist, Dr Mark Eidelman, recently participated in an international medical delegation to the city of Loja in southern Ecuador. There, delegation doctors treated local patients with various orthopedic problems, some of them severe. Dr Eidelman and another Israeli doctor held a surgical marathon: within four days they performed operations on 33 patients, most of them children from neighboring villages. By way of comparison, surgeons at Rambam, northern Israel’s largest hospital, carry out five to ten pediatric orthopedic surgeries weekly.


The delegation acted under the auspices of a voluntary US organization, ‘Operation Rainbow’. The California-based organization sends surgeons to different Latin American countries, to areas lacking medical knowledge, equipment and personnel. Among those on the 22-member delegation were five doctors, nurses, and physical therapists, accompanied by two and a half tons of medical equipment.


According to Dr Mark Eidelman, director of Rambam’s Pediatric Orthopedic Department, the doctors faced a difficult challenge. “The university hospital in Loja, where we performed the operations, publicized our mission about a year ago. Since that time, some 350 candidates requested operations, and doctors at the hospital chose 75 cases that seemed most urgent,” explained Dr Eidelman.


On their first day in Loja, the doctors examined the cases and ranked them according to severity. During the four following days, the delegation doctors performed surgeries and treatments on patients of different ages, with varying problems. “Every day we arrived at the operating room at 7:00 am and finished working at 11:00 at night,” recalls Dr Eidelman. “The pace was insane, but we wanted to treat as many patients as possible.”


Despite the fact that this effort involved orthopedic patients with limited mobility, people covered great distances to receive treatment. “Most of the patients came from villages in a range of 500 kilometers from the hospital, but these people had little choice. What can an eight-year old girl who has waited five years for treatment do if there is no pediatric orthopedist in her region?” said Dr Eidelman.


Patients ranged in age from 65 years to a five months, and Dr Eidelman remembers nearly every case. Though he has returned to Israel, the surgeon’s memories of Ecuador remain vivid. “This was the first time I took part in a delegation like this, and it was an incredible experience. I hope that in the near future I can participate in this crucial effort once again.”

Another Israeli Invention Stops Hospital Killer

By Abigail Klein Leichman  8th July 2012 Israel 21C

“Sepsis is a huge issue — one of the top killers, often as a complication of pneumonia or urinary tract infection and at times due to an infection acquired in the hospital,” says Dr. Yoav Avidor, CEO of Tel Aviv-based Cheetah Medical. “It progresses rapidly and is difficult to treat. In advanced sepsis, all the body’s organs start to fail. Septic shock sets in and the mortality rate is about 40 percent.”

Doctors can reduce mortality up to 40 percent by treating each case of sepsis right away with exactly the amount of intravenous fluids needed to correct imbalances of oxygen and other nutrients being delivered to the organs through the bloodstream.


But until Cheetah’s NICOM device came along, the only way to determine the right amount was through an expensive and invasive procedure that can itself cause infection. Since doctors prefer not to do this, a better way was clearly needed.


As soon as NICOM’s uniquely non-invasive system received FDA and CE Mark approval four years ago, it was bought by hundreds of hospitals in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, South Korea, Israel and France for ICU and anesthesia units. Just by sticking four sensors to the skin on the patient’s chest or back, the staff can continuously collect all the data needed to determine how much fluid to administer.


Now, trials at a dozen US hospital emergency departments are testing the assumption that using NICOM earlier would keep more patients from the ICU. This would save both lives and money, since one in four hospital deaths is caused by sepsis, and it’s the reason for about half of the admissions to medical ICUs.

The only system hospitals buy
Several other medical device companies in the 1980s and 1990s offered non-invasive ways to monitor hemodynamics, yet none worked well enough to be adopted widely. “NICOM is the first advance since then. Practically, it’s the only non-invasive system that hospitals actually buy and use on the really sick patients,” Avidor tells ISRAEL21c.


The genius behind the invention is Hanan Keren, a Weizmann Institute of Science physicist who helped commercialize MRI technology at the Israeli company Elscint. The device is made in Israel and marketed through Cheetah’s US headquarters in Vancouver, Washington.


“In medical devices, the big competitive advantage is the interface between technology and clinical need, and bringing the product to market with a business model that works,” says Avidor. “Many Israeli companies have exciting technology but few have experience with market interface, so they either try to sell the company or go in another direction.”


The COMMIT (Cardiac Output Monitoring Managing Intravenous Therapy) study begun in February could significantly enhance Cheetah’s marketing position.


“NICOM provides an effective method of optimizing fluid treatment in the emergency department, a vital step in the management of sepsis,” says Avidor.


In 12 leading US hospital emergency departments for the next year or two, half of the sepsis patients will randomly get the standard of care (no hemodynamic monitoring), while the other half get the protocol based on NICOM. The Israeli system will help determine whether the patient can handle the large amounts of fluids that can prevent progression of sepsis. If not, extra fluids would dangerously overwhelm the heart the way a car engine gets flooded.


Avidor expects that COMMIT will show a reduction in deterioration of sepsis; the number of admissions to the ICU; intubations; and kidney and liver failure that are common complications of sepsis.


“In general, I hope to see significant reductions in the cost of treatment for these patients, as well as mortality and complications,” he says.

The Fiasco at UNESCO

By DAVID PARSONS  dated 08/07/2012

The latest UNESCO decisions will only whet the Palestinians’ appetite to encroach on more religious sites within Israel.

In Washington they joke that no one is safe so long as Congress is in session, but nothing can compare to the “Flat Earth” society operating within the UN system.

Last week, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization made a series of decisions regarding religious sites in the Holy Land that are both patently absurd and woefully unhelpful in the search for peace and mutual understanding in this fractured region.

First, UNESCO followed up on last year’s admission of “Palestine” as a member state of the world body by listing the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as a World Heritage site located in this nonexistent country of Palestine.


Incredibly, the traditional place of Christ’s birth and the pilgrimage route leading to it were also added to the list of endangered World Heritage sites.

In pushing for this decree, the Palestinian Authority argued that the Church of the Nativity was in danger because the “Israeli occupation” was preventing them from repairing a leaky roof in the church as well as blocking access to this revered site.

Ahead of the vote, a team of UNESCO experts had visited Bethlehem and determined that the church, in fact, was not endangered and did not even qualify yet for World Heritage status. The Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox clerics who oversee the Nativity compound concurred with these findings in a letter sent to UNESCO in April, which urged that the site not be turned into a political football.

Yet a majority of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee did just that at its annual session in St. Petersburg last Friday. Ignoring the pleas of the clergymen and the advice of their own experts, 13 of the 21 member states on the Committee voted to prematurely grant the church World Heritage status and blame Israel for endangering it.

Now Israel was not opposed to listing the Nativity Church as a place of great significance to the entire world. But it did object to the politicizing of the process and to the finding that it is endangered. After all, nothing is stopping the roof repairs and over two million Christian pilgrims managed to safely visit the Church of the Nativity last year.

In another swipe at Israel last week, the UNESCO Committee also endorsed a Jordanian declaration from some 30 years ago that accused Israel of endangering the Temple Mount and walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Amman managed to add Jerusalem’s walled city and the Temple Mount to the World Heritage list in 1981 and then to the endangered list in 1982. But according to the Petra news agency, UNESCO has now accepted the Hashemite Kingdom’s claim that it has jurisdiction over these areas and that the Israeli occupation is harming the cultural heritage of the city.

The issue of Jerusalem is back on UNESCO’s agenda because Israel is trying to repair a rickety foot bridge to the Mughrabi Gate, the only access to the Temple Mount compound for Jews and Christians. It has been in danger of collapsing in recent years due to local earth tremors and heavy winter rains, and Israeli authorities have developed plans to replace the wooden bridge with a sturdier structure.

But Jordan has objected, insisting it alone has the right to make the repairs. The Palestinians also exert a claim to being the proper guardian of the Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, yet the PA backed the recent Jordanian effort at UNESCO.

This is because the Israeli plan calls for first conducting an archeological excavation of the embankment underneath the Mughrabi bridge and the Palestinians are afraid even more artifacts will be uncovered there proving the ancient Jewish connection to the area.

So it is clear that the Palestinians are once again manipulating UN forums like UNESCO, where they enjoy automatic majorities against Israel, to further their political campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state. In this instance, they have portrayed Israel as a reckless and uncivilized destroyer of cherished Christian and Muslim holy places, and thus unfit to be included in the family of nations.

In addition, the PA is once again circumventing direct talks with Israel to achieve peace or cooperation at any level and instead trying to impose solutions from the outside.

UNESCO should not be lending itself to such machinations, as this undermines its own stated goal of contributing to the building of peace among nations and peoples through an intercultural dialogue based upon respect for commonly shared values.

Yet UNESCO members have now entrusted a revered church to a Palestinian regime that has compiled a sordid record on safeguarding Christian and Jewish religious sites. For example, PA police stood by in October 2000 while a Palestinian mob looted and razed Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus. Upon orders from PA leader Yasser Arafat, PA security forces also assaulted and forcefully removed Russian Orthodox priests and nuns at monasteries in Hebron and Jericho.

Perhaps the most egregious example of the PA’s lack of credibility when it comes to safeguarding holy sites occurred at the very Church of the Nativity now entrusted to the Palestinians. In a dramatic April 2002 standoff with IDF troops, gunmen from Arafat’s own Fatah faction truly endangered the historic Church by commandeering the building and wiring it throughout with explosives.

In contrast, it cannot be stressed enough that Israel has a far better record on safeguarding and allowing access to holy sites than any other sovereign who has ruled the Holy Land over these many centuries.

Yet the fiasco goes on! And the latest UNESCO decisions will only whet the Palestinians’ appetite to encroach on more religious sites within Israel. In 2010, it was Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem. Next, we could see the PA exerting its claim to the Western Wall, which they insist is a Muslim holy site known as the al-Buraq Wall, where Muhammad tied his winged horse in his mythical “Night Journey.” After all, it lies just inches away from the “Israeli occupied” Mughrabi bridge.

The writer is media director for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, www.icej.org .

Syria Running for the U.N. Human Rights Council!!

Is this the real world we are living in? One has to ask, how does the sane part of the world allow the utterly hypercritical UN HRC to continue to operate this way. So much for Kofi Annan's attempts to reconstitute a human rights committee that has cresibility. 

By Hillel Neuer, UN Watch, http://www.unwatch.org/cms.asp?id=3280354&campaign_id=63111 

GENEVA - In the past decade, the U.N. Human Rights Council elected Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya as chair, hailed Sri Lanka’s “promotion and protection of all human rights” after its army had killed thousands of civilians, and convened an emergency session to lament the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of the Hamas terrorist organization.

Even so, historians will now have to decide whether the U.N.’s flagship human rights body is about to sink to a new low.

According to a U.S.-sponsored and EU-backed draft resolution that was debated today during informal meetings at the council in Geneva, the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad is a declared candidate for a seat on the 47-nation U.N. body, in elections to be held next year at the 193-member General Assembly.

As part of the U.N.’s 53-nation Asian group, Syria’s candidacy would be virtually assured of victory due to the prevalent system of fixed slates, whereby regional groups orchestrate uncontested elections, naming only as many candidates as allotted seats.

That’s how non-democracies like China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia won their current seats, and how Pakistan and Venezuela are about to do the same.

Fears that Syria will indeed win—in a 2013 election for a position starting the following year—appear to have mobilized the U.S. and the European Union into taking the unprecedented action of asking the council to declare in advance that a candidate country, in this case Syria, be declared inherently disqualified to join its ranks.

In a strongly-worded resolution condemning the Syrian government for committing atrocities, slated for a Friday vote, paragraph 14 “stresses that the current Syrian government’s announced candidacy for the Human Rights Council in 2014 fails to meet the standards for Council membership” as set forth in its founding charter. That Syria is a contender came as a major revelation.

Shockingly, the perfectly reasonable attempt to keep Syria away from the world’s highest human rights body was met with strong resistance.

In today’s discussions, Cuba declared itself “totally opposed,” and demanded the paragraph’s deletion, a position quickly echoed by China. It was for the General Assembly to decide whom to elect, insisted Havana.

“We don’t like to speak to country candidacies,” added Egypt. Brazil argued that the reference to council membership was “outside the scope of the resolution.”

Russia insisted that no action be taken until Assad’s candidacy was formally submitted. Likewise, India believed the subject was “premature.”

However, as noted by the Americans, the public record shows otherwise. Syria actually had declared its official candidacy in early 2011, around the time the killings began.

It was only after UN Watch revealed Assad’s bid and organized an international coalition of human rights groups to fight it that Western democracies rallied to the cause, applying heavy pressure on the Asian states. At the last minute, on May 11th last year, a deal was announced: Kuwait would replace Syria.

Assad’s U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari made clear, however, that his country had agreed only “to reschedule the timing of our candidacy,” saying they would run instead in the 2013 elections, for a three-year term.

His Kuwaiti counterpart corroborated the pact. “We agreed to exchange terms,” said Ambassador Mansour Ayyad Alotaibi. “Syria is not withdrawing,” he told reporters.

But once Kuwait’s entry ended the controversy, no one—until now—had paid any attention to the fact that Syria would actually run again soon.

Though it’s truly difficult to imagine how the Asians could, in face of all the horrors taking place, allow Syria to be one its candidates, the reality is that they did so just last year, changing their minds only after massive lobbying.

What is more, this past November Syria won unanimous election to two human rights committees of UNESCO, the U.N.’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Despite the suspension of Assad’s regime from the Arab League, the very same nations’ UNESCO ambassadors in Paris refused to allow objections to a country’s human rights record to interfere with their backroom rotation deals—lest one day the precedent be used against them. They nominated Syria, and it was duly elected.

After UN Watch campaigned against this obscenity, too, the U.S. and Britain attempted remedial action. Yet despite their best efforts, the old boys’ club could not be convinced to expel one of their own. Syria remains a full member of UNESCO’s committee to judge human rights complaints, and of its committee dealing with human rights organizations.

And unless America’s laudable effort succeeds, Syria may soon win a seat on the world’s highest human rights body as well.

How Many Refugees?

Elliott Abrams  June 20, 2012


http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2012/06/20/how-many-refugees/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eabrams+%28Elliott+Abrams%3A+Pressure+Points%29

Today the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (or PCBS) commemorated World Refugee Day by releasing new statistics on Palestinian refugees. Therein lies a tale.

The PCBS reported that there are now 5.1 million Palestinian refugees. Here is what it said about their age:

The Palestinian Refugees are characterized as young population where 41.7% of them are under the age of 15 years for Palestinian refugees in Palestinian territory, 35.9% of Palestinian refugees in Jordan in 2007, and 33.1% for Palestinian refugees in Syria in 2009, while 30.4% for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon in 2010.

This means, for example, that more than a third of Palestinian “refugees” in Jordan were born after 1997. That is either thirty years (if after the 1967 war) or almost fifty years (if they fled when Israel was established in 1948) after their parents or more likely grandparents arrived in Jordan. Those in Jordan have full Jordanian citizenship and vote in Jordan, which means this: a young Jordanian of Palestinian origin, whose family has lived in Jordan for thirty years and who has himself or herself always lived in Jordan, is still considered a “refugee.”

This is bizarre, and the new statistics are a reminder of the unique definition applied to Palestinian “refugees.” For every other category of refugees in the world, the 1951 UN Convention on the status of refugees clearly applies to the refugee only and not subsequent generations. This is the definition used by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees today. Only in the Palestinian case does a separate organization, the UN Relief and Works Agency, count not only those who actually left their homes but those in succeeding generations, presumably forever, and regardless of whether those progeny were born and are settled elsewhere with full citizenship.






So a young American boy of, say, ten years of age born in Chicago to American parents, but whose grandparents were Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948, is counted by UNRWA as a “Palestinian refugee.”






It is not surprising that the Appropriations Committee of the U.S. Senate on May 31 adopted an amendment defining Palestinian “refugees” the way all other refugees are defined, and rejecting the definition that produces the number 5.1 million today and who knows how many more millions as the years roll by. What’s surprising is that this effort, led by Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois–who would represent the young boy in my illustration, and his parents–was widely held to be controversial. It is common sense.

UNESCO Decides Center of Chistianity in "Palestine"

Politics, politics and more politics. With the wanton damage caused to the Chutrch of the Nativity by the Palestinians, sudenly the world body UNESCO has decided it is in danger and should be added to the list of World Heritage Sites under the auspices of "Palestine", a country that does not exist. This is just sick and will do nothing to promote peace in the region 


The UNESCO World Heritage Committee voted in a surprise decision Friday to include the Church of the Nativity, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, as a World Heritage site.



The vote, in the Russian city of St Petersburg, was 13 in favor and six against - with two abstentions - more than the two thirds required for inclusion on the list.


The Church of the Nativity is regarded as the birthplace of Jesus Christ, and is perhaps the biggest tourist attraction in the West Bank.


Palestinians push for Bethlehem UNESCO recognition Palestinians are making a last push to get parts of biblical Bethlehem recognized as an endangered World Heritage site ahead of a decision expected this week. The decision, submitted under emergency procedure once the Palestinians missed the deadline, came as a surprise.


Both the World Heritage's technical advisory body, as well as the committee's secretariat, had said the Palestinian application did not met the necessary criteria to be listed through the emergency procedure.


Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority government, welcomed the decision, saying it "shows the significance of Bethlehem to the world, and to world heritage."


"This is a victory for Palestine, as well as for justice, rights and human principles," he said.


"It is a welcome recognition by the international community of our historical and cultural rights in this land," Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi said.


Israel had objected at the church's being included as a World Heritage site in "Palestine," seeing it as the latest Palestinian attempt to pursue statehood unilaterally through the United Nations, rather than via negotiations.


In October, UNESCO had angered Israel by accepting Palestine as a member, even though it was not a United Nations member state.


"We're not opposed in principle to the Church of the Nativity being a World Heritage Site. That's not the issue. The issue is the politicization of UNESCO," Israeli Deputy Foreign Ministry spokesman Paul Hirschson told the German news agency dpa.


"The issue is the violation of UNESCO's own rules, after its own committee said there was no imminent danger to the Church, so no emergency procedure was needed," he said.


"Instead of taking steps to advance peace, the Palestinians are making unilateral moves which only move peace further away," a statement from Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said.


The United States, which like Israel opposed the Palestinian application, was also critical of the result of the vote.


"In the 40 years of the World Heritage Convention's existence, the emergency procedure has been used only four times and only in the most extreme cases, and always consistent with the recommendation of the advisory bodies. This body should not be politicized," U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO David Killion said in a statement.

Nazareth Conference - Apartheid?

The Nazareth conference was held recently to celebrate 150 years since a tiny dispensary was established in Nazareth by a devout Scottish couple, Dr. Kaloost Varden and his wife. The hospital was then officially adopted by the Church of Scotland and today it is the Israel Government Hospital for Nazareth, still supported from Scotland.

Irene Murray was the head midwife there for many years and through the work of my very good friend Wendy Blumfield as a childbirth educator, they all became good friends. Workshops were given which were attended by Arab and Jewish midwives and Tipat Halav (child welfare clinic) nurses from the kibbutzim and villages around as well as from the Nazareth hospitals.

The conference workshop was given by another British midwife, Kathryn Gutteridge, on the subject of helping women in childbirth after a history of sexual abuse, a problem that applies to every culture.

In the audience were midwives, social workers, childbirth educators and doulas, Arab Moslem and Christian, Jewish secular and religious. Many of them knew each other, hugged on meeting and chatted so much it was difficult to keep the coffee breaks to the allotted time.


Where are the BBC and the Guardian? Is this Apartheid?