At the end of January, the government decided to accept the recommendation of the Medicines Basket Committee and the Ministry of Health and determine - as required by law - the new technologies and medicines that will be budgeted and included in the medicines basket that the Ministry of Health and HMOs are required to provide.
This decision also included a special budget of about NIS 6 million that the Ministry of Health will transfer to the four HMOs for a pilot to implant a special and innovative pacemaker (the vagal pacemaker), which is implanted in a special operation for mental patients living with persistent depression that cannot be treated.
These are psychiatric patients who have been dealing with extremely severe depression for many years and are after many suicide attempts, so the psychiatrists who treat them define their treatment as a life saver.
The Ministry of Health has already determined that these patients should be treated as suffering from a rare orphan disease and that the special treatment, which costs about NIS 90,000 per transplant, should be budgeted for.
A few days later, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz announced the recommendation of the Medication Basket Pilot Committee to pilot the antidepressant pilot, saying the recommendation is part of "the changes that reflect the Ministry of Health's new priorities, moving mental health from the backyard to the Ministry of Health front." .
"New priorities."
Horowitz, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
However, although about six months have passed since the government's binding decision and the Health Minister's public statement, the Ministry of Health has not transferred the budget to the HMOs.
As a result, ten mental patients who are in a mental and physical condition that is one of the most difficult and tumultuous seen in the country, and who desperately need a pacemaker, continue to suffer extremely hard, and HMOs refuse to fund the pacemaker because the Ministry of Health has so far failed to implement the pilot.
The MKs for the patients
On Wednesday, Dr. Shmuel Hirschman, director of the Lev Hasharon Government Psychiatric Hospital in Pardesiya, said that one of the patients, who had been waiting a long time for the pacemaker's approval, had tried to commit suicide again the day before.
A senior health official told Israel Today that "such a severe injustice to a government budget promised and actually determined by the government and the Minister of Health for medical technology, designed to save lives and not actually given many months to unfortunate patients, has not occurred in decades."
Indeed, a week ago, four Knesset members who serve as co-chairmen of the Mental Health Lobby wrote to the Minister of Health that "more than four months since the pilot's approval, the Ministry of Health has not yet transferred the budget to the HMOs." "Bureaucracy will prevent patients from receiving this important treatment, and care must be taken to implement it urgently and to transfer the budget. We ask for your urgent intervention as someone whose mental health field is a top priority."
The letter is signed by MKs Edith Silman (right), Michal Waldiger (Religious Zionism), Emily Moati (Labor) and Katie Sheetrit (Likud).
"Israel Today" has also learned that in recent years thousands of patients worldwide have been successfully treated with a pacemaker, and in the last two years 11 Israelis who have suffered from persistent depression for many years have been operated on in Israel. .
It was also learned that the data presented at last week's conference show excellent data that all patients have gradually improved, about 40% no longer suffer from any significant symptom of depression, and that there is a dramatic decrease in suicidal thoughts.
These data were presented at the conference by Dr. Yoav Domani, Director of the Psychiatric Department and the Advanced Treatment Unit at Sheba Government Hospital in Tel Hashomer, and Dr. Kfir Pepper, Director of the Psychiatric Department and Advanced Treatment Unit at the Lev Hasharon Government Psychiatric Hospital in Pardesiya.
One of the patients who is struggling to get approval to finance the pacemaker is Yuval Harel, 51, from Karkur, who suffers from a very severe persistent depression and without any benefit from the existing treatments.
Harel recently applied to the Exceptions Committee of the Maccabi Health Fund, of which it is a member, for funding the pacemaker.
But a week ago, the exceptions committee at the fund refused to fund the pacemaker, even though it ruled that she had a "history of depression and suicidal thoughts that began at a young age," and that "the treatments she received did not improve her condition."
The Maccabi committee explained the refusal by saying that the pacemaker was not included in the medicine basket, and because Yuval refused to undergo treatment for electric shocks.
Harel is represented by Adv. Yael Friedel of the Friends of Medicine Association, which assists in the struggle to obtain expensive drugs in and out of the basket.
"Reduce shame."
Yuval Harel, Photo: None
Harel told Israel Today: "I am being interviewed openly, because I am trying to reduce the shame and guilt of mental illness. I realized that the pacemaker can help someone who suffers greatly, like me, and his chances of success are high. I hoped they would see me, and believe me and the very great suffering I have. "It passes, so when I received Maccabi's refusal, it shook me and took me back. Whoever is in our situation knows how great the suffering is and how great the loneliness is, and I ask that they see us."
TV presenter Eden Harel is Yuval's sister.
Now she has joined the public struggle and told Israel Today that "the field of mental health is a land of hope, with patients and families very much suffering and desperate. But there is now a pacemaker, and instead of treating it like any other disease, it is impossible to understand why my sister and other patients "Nothing else helped them - they do not receive the treatment, even though the Ministry of Health has declared that it is budgeted. It should be talked about like any other serious or terminal illness."
She joined the struggle.
Eden Harel, Photo: Arik Sultan
Very unusually, a week ago, the United Health Fund approved 23-year-old Ruth Altshuler transplant the pacemaker after a stubborn struggle between her and her family, through attorney Yael Friedel of the Friends of Medicine Association. Friedel wrote to Meuhedet that " "Puts her life in tangible danger, along with the lack of any quality of life since she was diagnosed with depression-resistant to all treatments about a decade ago."
Yehuda and Oranit Altshuler, Ruth's parents, said: "We were helpless in the face of the health care system, which does not count us when there is such a pacemaker that will be budgeted, but not actually given to patients. An unnecessary struggle over hope and the chance for improvement in her condition. "
The health minister's office said: "The delay is not normal, and the minister ordered the ministry's professionals to launch the pilot by the end of the month."
The Ministry of Health stated in response that "the ministry has been working in recent months to formulate a pilot, as part of which the pacemaker transplant will be handled. After extensive work with experts, the ministry will publish a support test in the coming days." In the Exceptions Committees. "
Maccabi HMO stated: "Unfortunately, this is a technology that is not in the basket but in the pilot phase at the Ministry of Health, and due to the privacy of the individual, we will not be able to comment beyond that."
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