Sheba Medical Center

The hospital was established in 1948 as Israel's first military hospital, to treat Israeli casualties of 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It was founded in a cluster of abandoned military barracks from the Mandate era, and was originally known as Army Hospital No. 5. Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had it renamed Tel HaShomer Hospital. In 1953, it became a civilian hospital, and Dr. Chaim Sheba became its director. Following Sheba's death, the hospital was renamed in his honor.[4]

Situated on a 800-dunam (0.80 km²; 0.31 sq mi) campus in east Ramat Gan, Sheba operates 120 departments and clinics. It has 1,430 beds, about 1,250 physicians, 2,300 nurses and 1,500 other healthcare workers. Sheba also employs 1,700 other staff, and nearly 1,000 long-term volunteers, researchers and foreign interns.[5]

It handles over 1,000,000.5 patient visits a year, including 200,000 emergency visits annually, and conducts more than two million medical tests of all types each year, on a $320 million (approximate) annual budget. Sheba is supported by donations from a network of philanthropists and friends from around the world.[6]

Safra Children's Hospital

Padeh Geriatric Rehabilitation Center

Sheba includes an acute care hospital, a rehabilitation hospital (one of the largest rehabilitation hospitals in the world, with 800 beds and 14 buildings), a women's hospital, a children's hospital, an eating disorder clinic, a PTSD clinic for soldiers,[7][8] a laboratory division, an outpatient division, and an academic campus.

The medical center is also home to the Israel National Center for Health Policy and Epidemiology Research (equivalent to the U.S. National Institutes of Health), the internationally acclaimed Israel National Center for Medical Simulation (MSR),[9] the Israel National Blood Bank and Cord Blood Bank, and the Safra International Congenital Heart Center.

Other major centers at Sheba include the Sheba Cancer Treatment and Research Centers,[10] the Sheba Heart Center that was donated by Lev Leviev,[11] and the Tel Hashomer Medical Research, Infrastructure and Services Co. Ltd., which provides global consulting and training services [12] There is also a special rehabilitation hotel, the Shilev Hotel, for recuperating patients. It has 36 double rooms outfitted like ordinary hotels rooms, and a medical wing complete with a doctors office, nurses room, and treatment room.[13]

The medical center also maintains a hotel for guests who wish to remain close to a patient, and two shopping malls.[13]

Sheba provides services to patients from across the Middle East, including many patients (especially children) from the Palestinian Authority. It also provides guidance and mentoring in the planning, construction and operation of healthcare systems and hospitals around the world.[12] Sheba has helped to found a multi-disciplinary clinic in Ukraine, an imaging Center in Uzbekistan, a medical center in the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, an oncology center in Mauritania, a polyclinic in the Ivory Coast, and more. Sheba has sent medical support to Kosovo, Armenia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Rwanda. Many patients from the Palestinian Authority and the Arab world are treated at Sheba.[14] Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was hospitalized at Sheba in May and November 2006.

Work by Yaacov Agam at the Sheba Medical Center

A large proportion of clinical research in Israel is conducted at Sheba. It is the main clinical trial venue for human health scientific studies conducted by the Weizmann Institute of Science, Tel Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University. In 2011, Sheba topped the list of Israeli hospitals for revenue acquired through research, at NIS 42.4 million, but came second in 2012.[15]

Scientific research at Sheba includes a study of pregnancy after transplantation of cryopreserved ovarian tissue in a patient with ovarian failure after chemotherapy;[16] a study of alginate-based stem cell biomaterial injected into heart attack victims that may repair heart tissue;[17] and a study showing that heavy cell phone users are subject to a higher risks of benign and malignant tumors of the salivary gland.[18] The Israeli company Ventor Technologies developed a novel type of heart valve which can be implanted by catheterization rather than open-heart surgery at Sheba. This invention was sold to medical device maker Medtronic in 2009 for US$325 million, of which about 10% went to Sheba Medical Center.[19]

In 2011, the hospital signed agreements with St. George’s University in London and with the University of Nicosia (Cyprus) to train medical students for a fee of 25,000 euros per student and to award them MBBS degrees. Deans of several Israeli medical schools, including Yosef Mekori of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, and Rivka Carmi, president of the Ben-Gurion University, criticised the programme, which they say will hurt the quality of the medical education received by Israeli students and damage medical care in Israel.[20]

In 2018, the Israeli Finance Ministry reported that some hospitals gave priority to medical tourists over Israelis and mentioned that Sheba Medical Center had earned 129 million shekels from medical tourists in the previous year.[21]

• Moshe Many
• Jacob Sadé
• Eli Schwartz
• Limor Schreibman-Sharir

• Isaias Afwerki, President of Eritrea

• List of hospitals in Israel
• Health care in Israel

• Sheba Medical Center