Rotary International took on a literal meaning Sunday when a Christian Israeli Arab, part of an Israeli Rotary Group Exchange, addressed a Hadassah meeting in Salt Lake City.
Hisham Nassar is a resident doctor in the cardiology department of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. A native of Nazareth, Nassar is an assistant to Professor M. Gotsman, head of cardiology.Hadassah is a Jewish women's organization organized in 1915 to bring modern health care to Israel for everyone regardless of nationality or ability to pay. Hadassah began Israel's first nurses training, medical and dental schools, public health and social welfare system. The Hadassah hospitals are the most technically sophisticated medical facilities in the Middle East.
Nassar explained the strides the hospital was making in administering tissue-type plasminogen activator, or generically, activase. Usually done intracoronary or into the heart, the Israelis are giving the drug intravenously in emergency rooms. "Time is important in coronary care. If an hour goes by before the drug is administered, there is too much muscle damage to the heart. But we have cardiac emergency physicians who can administer thrombolytic drugs in the ambulance. Sometimes the ambulance can be at the patient's home within two to 10 minutes," Nassar said.
All electrocardiograms and echo-cardiograms are computerized, making quick diagnosis possible. But the real problem in Israel involves heart transplants. While about 50 transplants are done annually, the need is much greater. But because of religious beliefs, not enough donor hearts are available. So patients are sent to Europe or the United States for transplant surgery. "But I see a softening on the part of the rabbis," Nassar said. "They are willing to look at clinical death as when brain death occurs."
Leader of the exchange group is Gideon Peiper, an Israeli architect who has been a member of Ramat-Hasharon Rotary Club since 1978. Peiper's Rotary District No. 249 will be in Utah through April 5. Next month, a delegation from Utah Rotary District No. 542 will visit Israel. Peiper chose the five-man delegation that accompanied him which includes two doctors, a television reporter, a flight test engineer and a magazine editor.
The exchange group has been visiting with local Rotary groups, Utah universities and hospitals, but they have also taken time to try out Utah's ski slopes.
Peiper noted that Israel has the same high-tech equipment he had seen in Ogden and Salt Lake hospitals. "But while we may have two in all of Israel, you have one or two in each hospital." Peiper said that while Israel's health care would be better if there was competition between hospitals like in America, "it would be unacceptable not to have medical care for everyone."