Health services in Israel / edited by Th. Grushka.

  • Israel. Miśrad ha-beriʼut.
Date:
[1968]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health services in Israel / edited by Th. Grushka. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/532 (page 5)
    In the circumstances, the Ministry had to begin almost from scratch. The personnel recruited were men and women previously employed by Jewish public institutions, such as the Va’ad Leumi, Kupat Holim and the Jewish hospitals, who had the inclination or social conscience to give a hand in the new venture. Preoccupied from the outset with the overwhelming task of coping with the ‘needs of mass immigration, the Ministry had a rather slow start. The Ministry is the supreme authority in all matters relating to health, and serves as the licensing body for the medical and allied professions. The Minister isa member of the Cabinet and responsible to the Knesset; the Director-General, a physician, is a civil servant. Except for certain unit chiefs directly responsible to him, most divisions and departments are under Assistant Directors-General, both medical and lay administrators (see Organization Chart). Corresponding to its two main functions — to ensure the provision of medical care and to be Israel’s principal public health agency — the Ministry is organized in two main divisions: curative services administration and public health service. The Division of Curative Services is responsible for operating the Govern- ment hospitals (general, mental, tuberculosis, and other long-term illness) and for licensing and supervising non-governmental hospitals. The Public Health Division is essentially a coordinator between units at headquarters (such as environmental sanitation, vector control, communicable diseases, laboratories, maternal and child health, mental health, chronic diseases and rehabilitation) and agencies in the field (district and sub-district health offices, health centres, mental health and child guidance clinics). A large measure of authority has been delegated to the units in the field, but they are far from being autonomous and they report to the Regional Servi- ces Administration at headquarters. The proper balance of centralization and decentralization is still a subject of study and discussion. The Ministry has over 9,000 employees, the professional staff including over 900 doctors and 3,500 nurses. The total bed-strength in Government hospitals is over 7,600. More than 70% of the 1966/67 Ministry budget (IL.151 million) was spent on hospitalization services.