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Sheba hospital suspected of selling know-how to foreign countries By Ran Reznick Tags: Israel News, Health Ministry  The Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer is under investigation for several incidents of alleged misconduct, including the selling of medical know-how to foreign countries without seeking approval or informing the government, Haaretz has learned. Both the State Comptroller's Office and the Health Ministry launched inquiries months ago, focusing on Sheba's four-year involvement (2003 to 2007) in training staff and setting up of a hospital in Bata, a coastal town in the oil-rich West African country of Equatorial Guinea. In addition, Sheba is also being probed on other concerns, including patients' suffering long waiting periods for operations, mismanagement of private maternity wards and excessive salaries paid to doctors. Advertisement Sheba allegedly received millions of shekels from the West African country in return for its services in training medical staff without notifying or seeking the approval of the Health Ministry. Most of the medical center's operations abroad were carried out through its Friends of Sheba Medical Center organization. Health Ministry officials were shocked when they discovered that Sheba's involvement in Equatorial Guinea was only one of 10 international projects in which it had been involved, and none was authorized by the government. Prof. Avi Israeli, the director general of the Health Ministry, set up a committee to examine Sheba's conduct and submit recommendations for regulating services offered by Israeli state hospitals to counterparts abroad. The Health Ministry became aware of Sheba's extensive ties with hospitals abroad years after they had begun, according to documents, letters and memorandums shown to Haaretz. On December 10, 2007, the deputy director general of Sheba Medical Center, Dr. Yitzhak Zeidis, detailed the hospital's activities abroad to Prof. Israeli. According to Zeidis, the hospital had then ceased training doctors and nurses for the hospital in Equatorial Guinea. However, Zeidis told Israeli that Sheba was still involved in training medical staff and providing expertise on building hospitals and laboratories to several countries such as Kazakhstan, the Ivory Coast, Russia and China. In addition, he said that Sheba medical staff was in talks regarding providing expertise to hospitals in Georgia, Ukraine, Hungary, China and India. "[We are considering] cooperating with a firm that wants to bid for tenders abroad for advising governments and setting up or improving health systems," Zeidis wrote. He did not specify which countries Sheba was in talks with. On September 14, Prof. Ze'ev Rothstein, the director general of Sheba Medical Center, was summoned to testify before a Health Ministry committee about Sheba's business dealings with hospitals abroad. Rothstein told the panel's members that Sheba was engaged in a number of such projects, sometimes including countries with which Israel has not yet established diplomatic ties. "The director general's judgment is sufficient in deciding whether or not to get involved in a project," Rothstein said. He added that the hospital usually asked the Foreign Ministry for permission whether to provide services to hospitals in foreign countries. Yair Amikam, a senior Health Ministry official in charge of its international relations, said he knew of no such request having been submitted to the Foreign Ministry. "The Foreign Ministry is not aware of any activity by state hospitals [abroad] and no coordination has been carried out with the Foreign Ministry," Amikam said. Amikam later sent a letter to the committee, stating that he had double checked the matter with the Foreign Ministry, which confirmed that no such request had been submitted by Sheba Medical Center. In the defense of the hospital's conduct, Rothstein criticized the Health Ministry, saying its alleged inefficiency and foot-dragging in approving projects would hurt the hospital's competitiveness abroad and reduce an important source of income. Some of Rothstein's colleagues, however, disagreed with his analysis. Dr. Meir Oren, the current director general of Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera, told the committee that during his tenure as director general of the Health Ministry in 1995, he issued a memorandum that regulated the services state hospitals offer to hospitals abroad. "[The memo was issued] following [Sheba Medical Center at] Tel Hashomer's involvement in the setting up of a hospital in Azerbaijan," Oren said. "Every contact with a foreign government must be approved and [done] in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry." Dr. Shimon Saraf, the director general of the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, also said the Health Ministry must be aware of hospitals' dealings abroad and approve them but remain "uninvolved in the talks." Prof. Shimon Reisner, a senior official at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, told the committee that all of the hospital's long-standing involvement in projects abroad had been approved by the Health Ministry. Reisner added that the revenues received from selling expertise abroad greatly assisted the hospital. Natan Samoch, a senior attorney with the Ministry of Health, also addressed the committee investigating Sheba's conduct and discussed the problematic legal issues that selling know-how to foreign hospitals can create. "There's a problem here of using state equipment for increasing revenue," Samoch explained. "Compensating state employees for their work is problematic, because they are not working for the state." Aryeh Paz, the Health Ministry's ombudsman, said earlier this year that state hospitals are prohibited from selling expertise abroad without the approval of the ministry and added that such transactions being carried out behind the state's back constitute a violation of state property and its rights. "Hospitals' dealings with hospitals abroad must take into account the interests of the State of Israel, and it has to be made certain that the state's resources are not exploited," Paz said. "It also raises many moral questions over potential conflict of interests in these dealings, and there may even be cases in which kickbacks are received or Israel's diplomatic ties are hurt." 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