Healing hands for Syrian kids
Syrian children injured in the bloody civil war tearing apart Israel's northern neighbour have found healing, caring hands in northern Israel, as they undergo treatment at the Ziv Hospital in Tzfat.
SYRIAN children injured in the bloody civil war tearing apart Israel’s northern neighbour have found healing, caring hands in northern Israel, as they undergo treatment at the Ziv Hospital in Tzfat.
Professor Anthony Luder, director of the paediatrics department at Ziv, estimates around one fifth of the Syrians arriving for treatment since 2013 have been children.
With around 25 births by pregnant mothers who were brought to the hospital, Luder reflected: “We now have around two football teams of Syrian Israeli babies.”
The acclaimed paediatrician and geneticist is also deputy dean of clinical sciences at Bar Ilan University’s Ilan B’Galil Faculty of Medicine, of which Ziv is an affiliate hospital.
Luder arrived in Australia last week as a keynote speaker for United Israel Appeal Progressive Trust’s 2018 fundraising campaign.
He spoke at Melbourne’s Leo Baeck Centre for Progressive Judaism on March 19, and will be speaking at Sydney’s Emanuel Synagogue on March 26, from 7:30pm.
Luder told The AJN “In the beginning there was a lot of culture shock, as the [Syrian] patients who came here were generally very seriously ill”.
“The shock of being in Israel and in an Israeli hospital was considerable for them and no doubt at the beginning there was a lot of fear and distrust.
“However, over the years, it’s become very clear to them and known to them in their own societies that patients here get excellent, really world-class care, and they have nothing whatever to fear from us.
“On the contrary, in the last few years, we’ve only had expressions of gratitude from them. In fact, we’re now getting busloads of people coming here for routine medical care,” he said.
Separately Luder is pursuing his genetics research, specialising in primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), a genetic flaw in the cilia, the tiny hairs lining the body’s tubular structures, which affects the flow of fluids, causing conditions such as chronic pneumonia, heart disease, infertility and sinusitis.
Trained in Canada, Luder has headed Ziv’s paediatrics department since 1992.
“Paediatrics is a very optimistic side of medicine, as your patients are growing and developing.”
As a founding member of the Rosh Pinah Pluralistic Jewish Community, a Progressive congregation, Luder has been an advocate of Israeli Progressive Judaism.
His message to Jewish Australians will be that “the work of Israel helping Syrian casualties, the citizens of an enemy country, and a neighbour, has been an example of the quality of this country [Israel] and the quality of its people. Being Jews, we’re doing our best to heal the world.”
PETER KOHN
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