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Dr. Eyal Mizrahi, 45, a soft-spoken physician and specialist in internal medicine, has taken on the challenging role as the pioneer director of the Hadassah Medical Organization (HMO)’s newly opened 20,000 square foot building hospital in the southern Israeli city of Netivot.
His staff members include his colleagues from the Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem and Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus campuses in Jerusalem and the HMO campus in BeitShemesh. The doctors and nurses rotate to Netivot, 62 miles from Jerusalem, bringing Hadassah’s world-class medicine to the 150,000 residents of the Western Negev, Netivot itself and neighboring towns of Sderot and Ofakim. Patients will also come from nearby Gaza envelope kibbutzim such as Be'eri, Kfar Aza and Nirim, which were among the first communities attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
On that terrible day, Dr. Mizrahi was there to treat the wounded, near his home in southern Israel.
"I saw the horrific scenes on the road and went into one of the military bases after a battle. As I began treating the wounded, more and more maimed patients arrived at the base with its limited facilities," he said.
"October 7 changed my life and shifted my perspective," he said. "Creating a medical center in the Western Negev to serve those who were most impacted by the massacre was an imperative for me."
"Rehabilitating the area and providing a powerful medical infrastructure that will impact all the population is the best answer to what happened here nearly three years ago."
Dr. Mizrahi studied medicine in the southern city of Beersheba. He completed his residency in internal medicine at HMO, mentored by eminent Internal Medicine Division head Dr. Arie Ben Yehuda.
Following in his mentor's footsteps, he subsequently completed a sub-specialization in geriatrics.
"At Hadassah hospitals in Jerusalem, we opened a multidisciplinary geriatrics clinic, created a program of volunteers who help hospitalized older adults, and launched a home hospitalization program where patients with complex conditions could receive care at home. This was one of the most important programs we led," Dr. Mizrahi said.
Even as the war in Gaza raged, plans went forward to open a branch of HMO in Netivot. Prof. Yoram Weiss, MD, director general, tapped Dr. Mizrahi to direct it.
Said Dr. Mizrahi: "On October 7, as we bent over patient after patient from the massacre in an army base, I couldn’t have imagined that less than three years later we would be leading a dreamed-about center with advanced medicine and sophisticated imaging machines for the citizens of this outlying part of Israel where my own family lives."
"This infrastructure can change the whole area," he said.
Dr. Mizrahi also hopes to set up an excellence program within the medical center for Netivot high school students to familiarize them with the world of medicine.
Fittingly, in addition to his role heading Hadassah-Helmsley Netivot, Dr. Mizrahi is completing a second residency — this one in emergency medicine.
