Israel Children's Cancer Foundation

With all of the above accomplished, my associate, Richard Goldberg and I had to undertake a fund raising program to help realize the goals of ICCF. Firstly, I took it upon myself not to receive any remuneration. This commitment upon my part has not wavered in the ten years since our founding. We started ICCF with nothing and I took it upon myself to loan ICCF $5,000 so that we could start generating some funds. Fortunately, through hard work, starting with a zero donor base, we currently have a donor file of more than 27,000 contributors, raising more than one million dollars a year.

The Israel Children’s Cancer Foundation (ICCF) has raised more than five million dollars since its founding ten years ago. Thousands of children afflicted with the dreaded disease of cancer in Israel have been helped with improved patient care funded by ICCF.

This progress in combating cancer is made possible through grants recommended by ICCF’s Medical Advisory Council. The recipients of these grants are major hospitals and medical centers in Israel that care for 93% of all children with cancer. These institutions are the Dana Children’s Hospital in Tel Aviv, Schneider Children’s Meical Center of Israel in Petach Tikvah, Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem, Rambam Medical Center in Haifa and Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba, covering the length and breadth of Israel.

These grants have helped develop innovative programs which have had an important impact on improving the level of patient care for these at-risk youngsters. Several of these programs include long-term follow-up clinics to monitor patients that have gone into remission; hospice programs in the hospital and the home; bone marrow transplant; introduction of a nurse-practitioner program; and providing stipends for entry level pediatric oncologists and hematologists.

It is important to realize that the funding that ICCF is providing is not available from any other source, including the Israeli government or through Kupat Holim, the government’s healthcare establishment.

The ICCF has made a major impact in improving the level of cancer care in Israel for children afflicted with this devastating disease. Ten years ago we started with a dream, then a vision, which has turned into a reality of helping to improve the level of patient care for untold thousands of youngsters.

ICCF @ 10
Celebrating A Decade of Progress

By Harold N. Blond
ICCF Founder and President

On June 9, 1987, the Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) convened a symposium in New York entitled “The Status of Clinical Oncology in Israel” and attended by the leading clinical oncologist in Israel. As a career fund raising executive, I was hired by the ICRF several months later as a fund raising consultant and I happened to come upon a 53 page transcript of the above symposium. In reading the transcript, I became perturbed about the problems facing the delivery of quality pediatric cancer care in Israel.

I was so troubled by what I read that I vowed to myself that I would work to help correct this condition upon my retirement. The aforementioned transcript sat on my night table at home and every few months I would once again re-read it which further reinforced my determination to help ameliorate this problem. Little did I know that my only son, Neil, and my oldest child, would come down with a malignant brain tumor in November 1997, succumbing to this devastating disease eighteen months later.

During my son’s illness, I was determined to accelerate the process. I took it upon myself to visit all the major hospitals and medical centers in Israel to help clarify the role that a new non-profit could play in helping to alleviate the pain and suffering of children with cancer in Israel. One of those who I met with was the late Dr. Rina Zaizov, Director of the Department of Pediatric Oncology and Hematology at Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel in Petach Tikvah, the largest facility in Israel caring for children with cancer. Dr. Zaizov, who was recognized as the dean of pediatric oncology and hematology in Israel, was most helpful in the launching of the Israel Children’s Cancer Foundation (ICCF), suggesting names for membership on our Medical Advisory Council, foremost among them Dr. Michael B. Harris, Director of Tomorrows Children’s Institute at the Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey.

Upon my return to New York, I incorporated ICCF as a New York State Membership Corporation and applied to the Internal Revenue Service for tax exemption as a 501(c)(30 nonprofit organization. I then set about building a Medical Advisory Council, and Dr. Harris, who agreed to serve as chairman, was most helpful in securing the most prominent and distinguished pediatric oncologists and hematologists in the United Stated to join this body.