Slippery Slope

For the first time, the Ministry of Health has admitted that Ethiopian women were widely treated with injections of the long acting contraceptive drug “Depo-Provera” in order to reduce the birth rate among them. (Haaretz)

(Hebrew – Haaretz)

The Health Ministry’s mental health audit division has only about 20 employees, who are expected to audit more than a hundred institutions, housing approximately 7000 patients. (Haaretz)

(Hebrew – Haaretz)

The cut in the Health Ministry budget for 2012 stood at NIS 18 million before the lately announced additional budget cuts, out of which  NIS 9.4 million, was to come from scaled-back development plans for hospitals. Health Ministry officials say that cutbacks in past years created a deficit of NIS 230 million in hospital development programs. Thus, Abarbanel Mental Health Center in Bat Yam will not be renovated, although the rooftop is made of asbestos, the beds are rusty and the rooms are small and in bad condition.

The High Court of Justice  took the state to task for inadequate government funding of the country’s health maintenance organizations. “The right of the citizens of the State of Israel to health [care], as shaped and enshrined in the state health insurance law, is slowly being emptied of content in light of the systematic erosion of the health maintenance organizations’ budgets,” Justice Salim Joubran stated, ruling on a petition filed by the Clalit and Maccabi HMOs. The HMOs were challenging the mix of components the government has been using to calculate the cost of medical care. They said it did not accurately reflect the cost of hospitalization and, in the process, was eating away at their budgets.

The management of the education center of Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba forbids Arabic-speaking teachers and students working at the center to use Arabic when speaking to each other. This violates Ministry of Health directives.

The Ministry of Health is barring doctors who studied medicine at Al Quds University in East Jerusalem from taking the Israeli certification exams, since the university has offices within the West Jerusalem municipal boundaries.

The Health Ministry’s investigation, headed by the Ministry’s Director General Dr. Roni Gamzu, into what has come to be known as “the Eltroxin affair” criticizes senior ministry officials and pharmaceutical companies involved in handling the reformulation of the synthetic thyroid hormone replacement and its implications for Israeli patients. The report found that the pharmacy department at the Health Ministry was not well prepared for risk management and handling reports of side effects. The report further found that HMOs are not obligated to report side effects, and that some of the doctors administering the drug did not know how to deal with the patients’ complaints, despite the claim by Perrigo that it had briefed the doctors twice about the changes in the drug’s composition.

According to Ministry of Health data the hospital occupancy rate in many Israeli hospitals exceeds 100%, with a national average of 107%. Hadassah in Jerusalem reported 142% occupancy, Schneider in Petach Tikva reported 146%. The Rambam hospital commented: “unfortunately, this is not a case of an occasional peak, but a permanent situation.”

(Hebrew)

A Ministry of Health report states that there are 476 nurses per 100,000 residents in Israel, a ratio that is among the lowest among developed nations.

Two recipients of a Ministry of Health award for qualitative compositions in the field of medicine and religious law, Prof. Hani Maayan and Naama Holzer, were not permitted to go on stage to receive the award because they are women.  In addition, the two authors were seated in a special bleacher for women and were separated from the male recipients.

(Hebrew)