Jerusalem parents keep up fight for pediatric cancer department

"Prime Minister Netanyahu is sitting for a long time without batting an eyelash, even though responsibility for the children is in his hands."

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
PARENTS OF CHILDREN with cancer hold a press conference opposite the Prime Minister’s Residence yesterday. (photo credit: Courtesy)
PARENTS OF CHILDREN with cancer hold a press conference opposite the Prime Minister’s Residence yesterday.
(photo credit: Courtesy)
The parents of children with cancer who struggled for a month for the opening of a pediatric hemato- oncology department at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center have not given up the fight despite a High Court of Justice ruling against it last week.
The parents said at a Tuesday press conference opposite the home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “45 days after our oncologists left Hadassah-University Medical Center [in protest of the policies and behavior of Hadassah Medical Organization director-general Prof. Zeev Rotstein], our children still have no solution. They have to travel to the hospitals in the center of the country for treatment,” said Shlomo Ben Dor, father of six-year-old Nehunia.”
Most of the six senior oncologists and three medical residents who resigned on June 4 from Hadassah are working as ordinary pediatricians in health fund clinics rather than taking care of children with cancer.
Ben Dor insisted that “there is no functioning department at Hadassah, thus there is no solution in Jerusalem. We won’t give up; we will continue our struggle. Prime Minister Netanyahu is sitting for a long time without batting an eyelash, even though responsibility for the children is in his hands. Every month, there are 12 to 20 more children in the Jerusalem area who get cancer and need treatment.”
The parents, some of whom previously held a hunger strike, now say they will hold vigils near the Prime Minister’s Residence until he orders the immediate opening of a department at Shaare Zedek.