The 13-year-old boy successfully underwent a bone marrow transplant - and donated his Nintendo device | Israel today

Rambam Hospital has made an impressive achievement, with 500 successful bone marrow transplants, and the care of about 30 children in the past year in the hemato-oncology unit at the Children's Hospital. They marked the event with balloons, light refreshments, children's sessions and music.

One of the children who over the years has been a success story of the unit, is 13-year-old Eyal Rubinfeld.

Eyal, a member of Kibbutz Degania, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 5 and after a long struggle he managed to overcome the disease.

Chemotherapy forced him to be hospitalized for extended periods, and Nintendo Israel donated a new Nintendo device, including a game kit.

As part of the medical procedure, the young deer had to undergo a bone marrow transplant and was required to enter isolation at the age of four for four weeks.

At the end of the complex period, Eyal decided to give the new Nintendo to the next child who would go into isolation, and this was given to a 10-year-old from Kfar Kanna.

Due to the isolation conditions the children could not meet, but passed blessings to each other.

Eyal Rubinfeld.

Dreaming of being a Lego builder in Denmark, Photo: Courtesy of the family

"I decided to donate the Nintendo so that others would also enjoy it during the hospitalization in the unit," Eyal said.

"It fills me with a sense of giving. What I have been feeling for the last month and a half is nausea and I want to go home already. My dream is to work at Lego Park in Denmark as a Lego builder. I want to wish health to everyone here in the unit and not suffer," he concluded.

Dr. Roni Geffen, director of the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit in Children, thanked the parents and their children during the event, saying: “You suffered from serious illnesses and were in a life-threatening situation.

Your path to medicine has passed through the desert called 'bone marrow transplant', and here you are, on the side of light and life.

Thank you, dear parents, for trusting us and entrusting us with what is most precious to you - your children, trusting the professionalism and humanity of our medical and nursing staff, and letting us lead you hand in hand in the same desert full of dangers and challenges. " 

Dr. Shifra Ash, Director of the Pediatric Hemato-Oncology Department, stated: The children treated in the unit are from the age of zero to 20 and some continue to be monitored in the clinic for a long time. Great solidarity and love for others. "

In the unit, all types of bone marrow transplants are performed on children, from self-transplantation, through transplants from a family donor, transplants from a foreign donor and even from foreign umbilical cord blood.

The unit's foreign donor databases rely on the donor databases of the State of Israel and are backed by international databases from Europe, the United States, Australia and South America.

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