A medical revolution:
The Lily and Edmond Safra Children's Hospital in Shiba Tel Hashomer, which will be officially inaugurated today as the first government hospital in Israel for children, is also the first in Israel, and one of the first in the world, to be a genome-based hospital. This is for the purpose of early detection of diseases and the provision of treatments Innovative on a national and global level based on the gene that leads to these diseases with the aim of curing them.
Dr. Itay Pesach, director of the Safra Children's Hospital, stated that the hospital's special genetic activity will include genetic tests for all babies born at Sheba and for all children treated at the hospital (after obtaining consent from their parents). This is for the purpose of early and accurate diagnosis even before the disease is discovered , in a wide range of patients and diseases, establishing pediatric medicine, and developing and making available genetic treatments and cures for diseases that could not be treated in the past. Some genetic tests are not included in the health basket and are not financed by the health insurance funds.
Dr. Itai Pesach. Global transportation, photo: Yehoshua Yosef
Real hope for the future
Safra Children's Hospital, established in 2002, contains approximately 370 inpatient beds and includes the newborn and premature unit, the largest pediatric intensive care unit in Israel, a national pediatric burn treatment unit and the only children's rehabilitation unit in Israel, a new psychiatric unit for children, and a surgical and transplant unit, Including the largest number of heart transplants in the country, 30,000 children go to it every year and more than 10,000 surgeries are performed there.
Dr. Itai Pesach told Israel Hayom: "Beyond being the world leader in research and treatment based on medical genetics, first and foremost we give children and their families real hope for the future.
As time passes, we manage to develop more and more innovative and ground-breaking genome-based solutions for more children, and for a wider range of diseases.
The Ministry of Health's recognition of Safra as an independent children's hospital greatly strengthens pediatric medicine in Israel."
Dr. Odalia Horin, pediatrician and geneticist in Safra: "Every doctor in Safra gets access to diagnoses and treatments based on genetic medicine and takes them into account in the set of considerations made in the framework of the diagnosis and treatment of children.
The hospital operates a broad program that makes the ability to perform innovative and advanced genetic tests accessible to everyone. In family planning counseling, for example, if a hereditary genetic factor is identified, the family is allowed to contact the relevant units in the library to prevent the birth of another sick child. There are approximately 8,000 rare diseases, of which almost Half of them the cause of the disease is unknown, so that more than half of the children remain without a genetic diagnosis. With us, these children are treated by advanced and innovative technologies that do not exist elsewhere. We also discovered dozens of new diseases, which led to a change in the treatment approach for children suffering from these diseases."
Unique world-class treatment
Many studies and experiments for the early detection and treatment of genetic diseases are conducted in Safra.
Among them is also a unique world-class treatment in which normal cell parts were transplanted in place of the damaged part in children suffering from an incurable genetic disease.
Additional experimental treatment is currently being given to 11 children diagnosed with Engelmann syndrome, which causes severe developmental and intellectual disabilities.
Gil and Eitan Shay.
"A huge challenge", photo: Oren Ben Hakon
One of the girls participating in receiving experimental genetic treatment to cure the disease is 12-year-old Gil Shai.
Her father, Eitan, tells Israel Hayom: "Taking care of a child like Gil with such a difficult complexity and inability to perform most actions on her own, is a great privilege along with a huge challenge. Our life as a family has changed beyond recognition from the day she was born. The fact that there is a drug that may improve The quality of life of Gil and the whole family gives us hope for a new way."
Prof. Kreis.
Leading the medicine of the future, photo: Gideon Markovich
Prof. Yitzhak Kreis, director of the Sheba Medical Center, told Israel Hayom: "The new Safra Children's Hospital is an example of coexistence and a symbol of Israeli society as a whole.
Here, all disputes are put aside and each child and person is treated as a person.
The hospital responds to the challenges of the health system, promoting equality in health between the center and the periphery and leading the medicine of the future. In the 75th year of Israel, the first government children's hospital was founded, which is a home to the best experts in the world and a magnet for groundbreaking clinical research with an emphasis on the human genome and diseases genetics".
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