Zion Hagai appointed IMA chief
Prof. Zion Hagai, a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology, has been elected unanimously and without any opposition to become chairman of the 25,000-member Israel Medical Association (IMA), replacing anesthesiologist Prof. Leonid Eidelman, who served in the position for eight years.
For the past four years, Hagai served as deputy chairman of the IMA and chairman of the hospital doctors’ division of Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest health fund. He previously headed Rehovot’s Kaplan Medical Center Gynecology and Obstetrics Department for 21 years.
The IMA is the representative organization of all Israeli physicians and dentists. It aims not only as a labor union to promote the conditions and welfare of physicians, but also to maintain their professional and ethical standards and medical quality and promote the public health system.
Hagai said, “We often see aggressive legislation aimed at harming the status and earning power of the doctor. The government continues to withhold necessary budgets from the public health system, causing harm to many patients who do not receive what they need. Even the Health Ministry’s 2015 program to shorten queues for surgery and other medical care is faltering and in fact does not really exist.”
Eidelman will become president of the World Medical Association in October.