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The
five institutions treat 93% of some 1,400 Israeli children with
cancer, Mr. Blond said.
Hadassah University Hospital will use the grant to hire a secretary
and buy a computer, according to ICCF documents. "We need
to be able to raise money so that talented [physicians] are
not bogged down doing secretarial work," the mother of
a cancer patient at Hadassah, Rivka Bergstein, wrote in a letter
to Hadassah and made available to the ICCF.
The Schneider Center will use the money to hire a patient coordinator
to help keep track of the 1,300 children who were cured in its
facility. "[A] cure is not enough. We have to make sure
that our cancer survivors have good quality of life," the
director of the pediatric oncology department at Schneider,
Dr. Isaac Yaniv, wrote in a letter to Mr. Blond.
One of Mr. Blond's future projects will be to provide stipends
for pediatric oncologists in Israel who are earning low wages
and have to take on a second job. "Instead of spending
eight hours a day treating children with cancer, physicians
have to find other means of livelihood to survive," he
said, adding that this contributes to a depreciation in patient
care. "By supplementing their salaries they can dedicate
themselves full-time to the children."
Born and raised on New York's Lower East Side, Mr. Blond has
been a fund raising executive for 45 years. He raised money
for medical institutions such as Albert Einstein College of
Medicine in New York and the medical center of Technion-Israel
Institute of Technology in Haifa. After reading a 1987 report
on the poor state of Israel's clinical oncology, Mr. Blond was
moved to address the problem.
In 1996, Mr. Blond's 40-year-old son Neil was diagnosed with
terminal brain-cancer. "When my son took sick, I said,
'if I'm ever going to do something [for cancer care in Israel]
I'm going to do it now.'" He gathered an advisory board
and procured a partner, ICCF's executive vice president, Richard
Goldberg. In 1998 he enlisted his friend, Senator Lieberman,
to serve as the foundation's honorary president, he said.
After three years of soliciting private donations by mail, Mr.
Blond has begun to approach major foundations. His trump card
is ICCF's unique mission: "We are the only organization
raising the level of clinical care for children with cancer
in Israel. The combination of cancer, Israel and children gets
a lot of sympathy and support." |
Press
Helping Israelis Help Kids
Forward Staff 10/6/00
In its first "meaningful" grant-making cycle, the
Israel Children's Cancer Foundation is awarding $100,000 to
five Israel-based medical centers to help improve their pediatric
cancer facilities.
The ICCF granted $20,000 in September to each of the five institutions,
according to a foundation release. The gifts will be distributed
at a fund-raiser on November 29 at the French Institute-Alliance
Francaise in New York City, at which ICCF's honorary president,
vice-presidential nominee Senator Lieberman, has been invited
to speak.
This is the foundation's first "meaningful grant"
since it was formed three years ago, its president, Harold Blond,
said. Mr. Blond, 69, plans to raise $5 million in the next five
years to improve what he said is the insufficient care received
by Israeli children with cancer. The fund will go toward transplants,
equipment upgrades and the hiring of physicians and nurses to
help treat what ICCF calls "the biggest killer of children
in Israel."
Hospitals are required to submit requests for grants, which
must be approved by the foundation's medical advisory council.
The council consists of 25 oncology specialists from the United
States and Israel. Michael Harris of Hackensack University Medical
Center heads the council.
This year's grants will go to the pediatric oncology units of
Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Hadassah University Hospital-Ein
Kerem in Jerusalem, Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba,
Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer and Schneider Children's
Medical Center of Israel in Petach Tikva. |
