Laniado Hospital

, founder of Laniado Hospital. The vision for establishing the hospital originated during the Holocaust, when Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam experienced the brutality and inhumanity of the Nazis firsthand. At the cornerstone-laying for Laniado's second building in 1980, he told the assemblage in Yiddish: I was saved from the gas chambers, saved from Hitler. I spent several years in Nazi death camps. Besides the fact that they murdered my wife and 11 children, my mother, my sisters and my brother — of my whole family, some 150 people, I was the only one who survived — I witnessed their cruelty. I remember as if it were today how they shot me in the arm. I was afraid to go to the Nazi infirmary, though there were doctors there. I knew that if I went in, I'd never come out alive. … Despite my fear of the Nazis, I plucked a leaf from a tree and stuck it to my wound to stanch the bleeding. Then I cut a branch and tied it around the wound to hold it in place. With God's help, it healed in three days. Then I promised myself that if, with God's help, I got well and got out of there, away from those ''resha'im'' (wicked people), I would build a hospital in Eretz Yisrael where every human being would be cared for with dignity. And the basis of that hospital would be that the doctors and nurses would believe that there is a God in this world and that when they treat a patient, they are fulfilling the greatest mitzvah in the Torah. == History ==

is seen at center left; his son, Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Halberstam (with glasses) is seated to his left. The Rebbe began working towards his goal two years after founding the Hasidic community of Kiryat Sanz in northern Netanya. In 1958 he laid the cornerstone for a hospital, although he had no capital, no fund-raising apparatus, and no building permit. In 1962 the leftist party which controlled the Health Ministry suddenly quit the government coalition and the ministry was given to the Torah-observant Hapoel HaMizrachi party. One day the deputy health minister, Yitzhak Rafael, and other officials visited the Rebbe in Netanya. After the meeting, the Rebbe called Rafael aside and asked him to use his position to help other Torah-observant Jews. Two days later, the building permit arrived in the mail. personally fund-raising for his hospital in North and South America. Whenever he collected some money, he would continue building. In 1963 he received his first major donation in the form of a $300,000 bequest from the estate of Alfonse and Yaakov Avraham Laniado, Swiss bankers who had willed their money to health and educational institutions in Israel. The Rebbe decided to name the new hospital after the Laniado brothers. In 1972, a $500,000 grant from the United States Agency for International Development helped complete the electrical, plumbing and elevator systems. Now the only thing lacking was an operating permit, which the government was still loath to supply. The Minister of Health at the time claimed that permits had already been granted to three hospitals in the Netanya area, but Sidney Greenwald, the first chairman of the American Friends of Laniado Hospital, convinced him to issue one to the Klausenburger Rebbe, too. In the end, Laniado was the only hospital opened in Netanya. Until his death in 1994, the Rebbe planned the strategic development of the hospital's departments and services, and supervised every aspect of the hospital's operation. Today Laniado Hospital includes departments for radiology, hematology, pediatric emergency, oncology, in vitro fertilisation, geriatrics, women's health, and many more. The largest department in the hospital is the maternity ward, which delivers more than 6,000 babies annually. Laniado lies within a five-block radius of other institutions founded by the Klausenburger Rebbe — including synagogues, Talmud Torahs, girls schools, yeshivas, kollels, an orphanage, and an old-age home — and the Kiryat Sanz Hasidic community itself. ==Operating principles==

On opening day, the Klausenburger Rebbe promulgated a set of nine Founding Principles emphasizing the hospital's ''raison d'être'' as a means of fulfilling the Torah's commandments to heal, to love one's fellow man, and to demonstrate belief in God. The Rebbe regarded the hospital as just another Torah institution, and instructed his staff to treat patients with the Torah principles of kindness and compassion. The first test of this no-strike policy occurred during the 1983 general doctors' strike which crippled Israeli hospitals for over four months. Laniado was ostracized by the doctor's union, but the Rebbe refused to yield. Since then, Laniado has never participated in any doctors' or nurses' strike. The hospital is also committed to doing everything possible to preserve and improve the quality of life. To that end, Laniado often provides expensive and often non-reimbursable medical services which exceed its annual operating budget of $50 million. The hospital relies heavily on private donations to make up its budget shortfall. ==Nursing school==

In 1978, the Rebbe opened the Laniado nursing school to educate nurses in the "Jewish way" of caring for the infirm. As of 2006, the school had graduated 1,000 nurses, who found jobs at Laniado and at other hospitals throughout Israel. The school offers a 30-month certification course for religious girls (which includes an 18-month course on the halakhic aspects of healing), and a 20-month practical nursing course for women of all ages and backgrounds. In 1986 the school broke ground on a new building donated by Rudolph and Edith Tessler, and was renamed the Tessler Nursing School. ==Innovations and medical discoveries==

In keeping with the hospital's commitment to the sanctity of life, Laniado doctors and researchers are constantly looking for better ways to treat illness. Researchers in the hematology department regularly work together with Laniado doctors on stem cell and diabetes research. In the early 2000s, specialists from the hematology, neurology and infectious diseases departments discovered the first cure for West Nile virus while treating a 70-year-old patient. In the coronary care department, physicians have speeded up catheterization of incoming patients by routing Magen David Adom ambulances directly to the coronary care unit rather than the emergency room. A government survey of all coronary intensive care facilities in Israel showed that the recovery rate for heart-attack victims at Laniado is 30 percent higher than the national average. == References ==