Opinion | Cabinet decisions cost us health Israel today

Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz yesterday (Monday) launched the important program "Intensive Vaccine Mobile", to encourage the immunization of more than a million Israelis who have not yet come to receive the first and second vaccines. Since the end of the third wave, senior health officials have repeatedly said that a national plan should be launched to encourage anyone who does not come to be vaccinated, but scandalously, for several months the ministry and HMOs have made no special effort, certainly not an effort to convince hundreds. Thousands of Israelis do this. Considered "better late than never," Horowitz has launched a critical national plan to fight Corona, and it is hoped that it will succeed in getting hundreds of thousands of Israelis vaccinated.

Also discussed yesterday were the discussions and debates in the Corona Cabinet and the decision to open, however, the school year on September 1st. In this decision, Prime Minister Bennett and the government wanted to convey to all of us that they are succeeding in dealing with the fourth wave to such an extent that the school year will open as usual subject to special tests, restrictions and guidelines. This, along with The anger of Education Minister Yifat Shasha Bitton. It is hoped that this statement will also be fulfilled.

Thus, in contrast to the spirit and atmosphere that the government and its leader want to present, the fourth wave is hitting hard and tragically in Israel, with daily record numbers of seriously ill and coronary patients, but can hardly be heard in government ministers' statements and speeches. Dozens of families a day are notified of the deaths of their loved ones from the corona, and the atmosphere that arises from the government and the corona cabinet borders almost on apathy and turning their backs on the victims. The Prime Minister exaggerates and emphasizes in his statements the economic price of the closures, but does not emphasize the terrible price of the loss of life that has already befallen almost 7,000 families.

Bennett reiterates in his statements that strengthening hospitals is one of the pillars of quarantine prevention, and he intends to make the decision to gradually add, and subject to an increase in hospital numbers, hundreds of standards of physicians, nurses and administrative staff to all hospitals. This is so that they can withstand, or at least declare they can withstand, the increase in patient numbers is difficult. Indeed, some hospital administrators have already paid their dues in understandings with the government, declaring with their characteristic arrogance and arrogance, as if they were health ministers themselves, not to mention prime ministers, that all hospitals could reasonably treat difficult patients and thus Israel could avoid closure.

However, these statements are far from the grim reality in some hospitals. One can start with the seven non-state-owned hospitals, which on Tuesday resumed their struggle in the state for the budgets promised to them and some were not given, and some of the directors of these hospitals complained that they were cheated by the government and the state. These hospitals are headed by Hadassah and Shaare Zedek, the main hospitals in Jerusalem, without which there would be no medical hospitalization in the capital. The fact that hospitals are once again crying out for help in the midst of the fourth wave indicates how fragile Bennett's statement is about the strengthening that has already been achieved for hospitals in the country.

Israel Today revealed a week ago that Dr. Miki Halbertl, director of the Rambam Government Hospital in Haifa, said in conversations (documented in the recordings) with the hospital directors that in one of the discussions about the hospitals' ability to treat difficult patients, "Kassah was" . He also said that senior government officials told senior Ministry of Health officials that "these numbers need to be reached, compromise, go down in standards, everything is acceptable." According to Halbertl, senior officials in the Ministry of Health responded that "if we really reach these numbers and people start dying on the street, no one will choose you anymore, think what you say."

Dr. Halbertl told hospital administrators after heated discussions that Bennett was convinced that new budgets and standards should be given to hospitals, and indeed the promise was settled with the administrators. And their chances of recovery, which are not high even with optimal treatment, are even lower, all under the auspices of the Corona Cabinet, which is operating as if there were no hard and deadly fourth wave here, leaving many more victims in Israel.