Regulations prohibit aesthetic doctors from analyzing • Correspondence in the Ministry of Health indicates that they fear petitioning • Ministry of Health: "This is not urgent treatment"

• 10,000 aesthetic surgeries a month // Photo: Gil Eliyahu-Ginny

Battle for aesthetic surgery in the Corona era: The Association for Plastic and Aesthetic Surgery requires the Ministry of Health to repeal the ban on aesthetic surgery as part of restrictions imposed Sunday as part of emergency regulations to combat the spread of corona virus. The Ministry of Health, on the other hand, says the special restrictions on aesthetic surgery are "set by the government."

It is estimated that in Israel approximately 10,000 aesthetic and plastic surgeries are performed per month, most of them in clinics, institutes and private hospitals.

On March 18, the chairman of the Association for Plastic and Aesthetic Surgery, Dr. Meir Cohen, wrote to the union's members that he "recommends private room managers to cease aesthetic treatments and surgery at the end of March."

About a week ago, Dr. Cohen again wrote to the union members, recommending a gradual return to running the clinics starting Sunday, following a series of special measures to prevent the spread and infection of the virus. Dr. Cohen noted that the "infection curve is flat."

"Israel Today" learned that following this letter from Dr. Cohen last Saturday, the Ministry of Health made the decision to include a special section prohibiting the aesthetic surgery that did not exist until now in the emergency provisions for the corona epidemic.

Internal correspondence with the Ministry of Justice in the Ministry of Health indicates that it was initially not intended to include this section in the regulations, and it was added after he became enthusiastic about the proposal of the Ministry of Justice. It also emerged that in the legal office, the plastic doctors were appealing to the Supreme Court, and that the Ministry of Health feared that it had "no good answers" to allegations that would go against these provisions.

Dr. Cohen said that the information "Israel Today" provided to the Israeli Association of Plastic Surgery about the correspondence in the Legal Bureau "should harass every citizen of Israel. It turns out that the decision to close private operating rooms for aesthetic surgery was made without a professional basis, and it seems that a decision has been made to harm an entire sector of patients and therapists with ease. "

The Ministry of Health said: "The restrictions on aesthetic surgery were set by the government in emergency regulations in light of the union's announcement that it urged its members to resume surgery on economic motives. The regulations were issued on the basis of professional opposition to this in the Ministry of Health, as this is not urgent treatment."