"Shani: The guiding light and father figure of Israel's health system"

The Sheba Medical Center is delighted to congratulate Prof. Mordechai Shani on the State of Israel's decision to award him with the prestigious Israel Prize for "Lifetime Achievement." The decision was announced this week by the Minister of Education, and will be awarded by the President of the State of Israel on Israel Independence Day (Yom Haatzmaut), April 29, 2009.

The Israel Prize is the highest, most distinguished award given by the state, granted annually in a range of fields from music to science. "Lifetime Achievement Awards" are rare and especially coveted.

The Israel Prize committee for 2009 said that it was awarding Prof. Shani "for a lifetime of exemplary public service, and for being the guiding light and father figure for medicine and the health system of Israel."

"Prof. Shani was central to the establishment and development of the Sheba Medical Center; the reorganization of Israel's psychiatric services; the founding of the school for health policy at Tel Aviv University; the drafting and passage of Israel's national health insurance policy and legislation; and the founding of many medical research institutes and scientific foundations (that have produced hundreds of scientific studies); and the mentoring of generations of doctors at Sheba."

"In all these capacities, and through his tenures as director general of the Israel Ministry of Health, Prof. Shani had an enormous impact on the health and welfare sectors in Israel, and specifically on the care for Israel's weakest strata and most vulnerable populations, in Israel's peripheral areas and all across the country. He is an enormously impressive and accomplished man by any international standard; the natural and undisputed leader of Israel's health system. Nobody has had a greater influence than him," concluded the prize committee in its formal award citation.

Professor Mordechai Shani, was director general of the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer for 33 years; served two terms as director general of the Ministry of Health; was the architect of the 1994 reform of Israel’s health system; was a key player in the creation of the landmark Patient's Bill of Rights; was co-founder of the Alut Israel Association for Autism; founded Israel's "National Institutes of Health", known as the Gertner Institute for Health Policy and Epidemiology, at Sheba; was chairman of the all-powerful Pharmaceuticals Approval Council in the Ministry of Health; and founded the Ziering National Center for Newborn Screening. Today, he heads the Sheba/Tel Hashomer Research Foundation and the TAU School for Health Policy, among many other activities. The Israel Prize committee's formal review of Prof. Shani's career accomplishments (in Hebrew) runs five pages long!

Commenting on the award, Sheba CEO Prof. Zeev Rotstein (who succeeded Prof. Shani as director of the hospital), said that "nobody is more deserving of this exalted award than Prof. Shani. Everybody at Sheba is extraordinarily happy for Prof. Shani, and proud to be associated with him. It is a great honor for Sheba too, which continues to be the leading, most comprehensive, and most advanced medical center in Israel."

Prof. Shani will be attending the Friends of Sheba Medical Center Opera Benefit & Reception on Sunday, April 26 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.