BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

Soroka’s Attitude and Approach to Medical Education and Collaboration between Us As noted, during my tenure as medical director of Clalit, Moshe Soroka was the general director of the sick fund. His position on medical education was identical to mine in terms of conclusions, but different in terms of motivations: Soroka wasn’t a physician. In light of the acute shortage of doctors in rural and border areas, Soroka viewed the way medical education was being handled in Israel as a betrayal of Zionism. He felt that medical educators and outstanding scholars were betraying the objective needs of the State of Israel at this crucial juncture. I saw things differently. The people in the medical community were serving in the medical corps of the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, or army, with great dedication and faith, and I did not think they slacked in their loyalty to the needs of the country and its citizenry. I recalled what the medical students had said in the Berenson Commission report - that there was a gap in the level and quality of the health system in the hospitals and the health system in the community. Hospitals were staffed by high-level young doctors, the community by a constant turnover of elderly physicians. I knew that as long as we didn’t raise the level of medical personnel in the clinics and bring it up to par with the level of medical personnel in the hospitals, there was no way we would come to grips with the problem. As long as we failed to address medical education, first and foremost, professional specialization in community medicine on a high level, nothing would change. In other words, in my opinion, it was not a question of Zionism or lack of Zionism. Rather, it was a matter of good medicine or bad medicine. From my perspective, the issue began with medical education, then in-service training, and especially specialization in family medicine. Despite this, the collaboration between Soroka and myself was spectacular – and not just on this issue. When I traveled to the States to look for a dean for the medical school in the Negev, Soroka took steps to ensure there would be an additional internal medicine department at the hospital in the Negev, so there would be room for more students, and more study opportunities at the Negev hospital. Every time a new medical school was founded, in Tel Aviv or Haifa, Soroka proposed collaboration with Clalit, and even provided budgets. Even though he was treasurer of the sick fund, it was far from simple for him to invest resources in medical education. From Zichron-Yaakov to Establishment of the School of Medicine in Beer Sheva Even prior to the founding of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva’s founding mayor David Tuviyahu called, wishing to consult with me. The invitation was prompted by my position as a member of the steering committee on establishing a university in Beer Sheva, and, no doubt, by my keen interest in fighting for a medical school within it. He invited me and two or three other figures to a meeting, including Micha Talmon, 34 director of the southern region of the Ministry of Housing. The discussion took place at the municipal headquarters, housed at the time in the former mosque at the entrance to the Old City, where Tuviyahu spread out a map of three possible locations for the university: The first was beyond the tracks of the northern train station at the time – today, in the Ramot Neighborhood; the second was in place of the Na’ot Midbar Hotel that had been razed several years earlier and on the road to Ashkelon; and the third was facing the hospital. I recall that I fought the positions of others present at the meeting, arguing that the university must be built facing the hospital, so that the school of medicine would be in proximity to the hospital. My reasoning was adopted by David Tuviyahu. Later, along with Prof. Moshe Prywes, I took the position that the medical school shouldn’t be located on the university campus, but rather within the hospital campus. 34 Micha Telmon (1922-2013), arrived in Beer Sheva in 1949 where he served for a decade as the Ministry of Housing’s director for the Negev District, overseeing public construction in Beer Sheva and the region, e.g., villages and development towns such as Sderot, Ofakim, and Netivot in the western Negev. Afterwards, he served for a decade as director-general of the Israel Lands Authority, working hand-in-hand with mayor Tuviyahu to found Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and he then served as BGU’s comptroller. Telmon was also a member of the Labor Federation’s executive committee and was among the promoters behind establishing the Tuviyahu Archive of Negev History. He was awarded Beer Sheva’s Key to the City in 1999.

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