Foundation and early history Following the
independence of Israel, the Medical Corps established a temporary military hospital in one of the former
Ottoman government buildings in
Beersheva. A year later, the hospital was transferred to a British government compound, where it was run by the
Hadassah Medical Association and named after Dr.
Chaim Yassky. In 1949,
Clalit Health Fund of the Hebrew Workers in Eretz Israel opened a clinic in the city to serve citizens who were members of the
Histadrut. This clinic required hospital services for continued treatment. The nearest hospital was the
Kaplan Medical Center in
Rehovot.
Hadassah was not in a position to expand its operations due to budgetary constraints as
Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem was then under construction.
David Ben-Gurion proposed that the government should establish a hospital in the
Negev rather than Hadassah or the Histadrut, but the Health Ministry did not have sufficient funding.
David Tuviyahu,
mayor of Beersheva, joined the effort to establish a larger, more spacious and modern hospital. For this purpose, he met with various individuals, among them Moshe Soroka, chairman of the
Clalit Health Services. Soroka expressed his willingness in principle for the Histadrut Health Fund to establish a hospital, but Minister of Health
Yosef Serlin, who aspired to reduce the activity of the fund and transfer it to the state, objected to this idea. In August 1955, Dov Begun, representative of the Histadrut in the
United States, convinced the president of the
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union,
David Dubinsky (1892–1982), to donate US$1 million ($250,000 every year for four years) toward establishing a hospital in the Negev that would commemorate the organization's name. The groundbreaking ceremony took place on 23 July 1956. The hospital building was designed by architects
Arieh Sharon and Benjamin Idelson. In October 1959, the opening ceremony of the Central Hospital of the Negev was held. At first, the hospital contained several departments: the
General Surgery Department (in the framework of which were the
Otolaryngology Department, the
Ophthalmology Department, and the
Urology Department), two
internal medicine departments, the
Orthopedic Department, the
Cardiology Institute, and the
Radiology Institute. Later, additional departments were opened.
1970s: New name After Moshe Soroka, the director of Clalit Health Organization in the 1950s, had died in 1972, the hospital was renamed in his memory.
21st century In 2018,
Shlomi Codish was named director-general of the hospital, replacing Ehud Davidson, who held the post for five years. On 19 June 2025, during the
Twelve-Day War, the hospital was struck by an Iranian missile, causing extensive damage and injuring about 65 people. ==The campus==