The Health Ministry has suspended for two months Dr. Eyal Ness, a surgeon, following his 2004 conviction at the Haifa District Court for medical negligence that endangered a 21-year-old female patient he operated on.

In the ruling, Dr. Ness was cleared of all allegations of sexual violations that the patient said he had committed against her during the treatment.

The suspension of the surgeon's license will go into effect early this month and expire on April 15. Dr. Ness works at the Clalit HMO in northern Israel.

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The decision to suspend was made by a retired judge, Vardi Zeiler, who is in charge of penalizing doctors at the Health Ministry. Zeiler received a recommendation by the disciplinary committee headed by Dr. Yigal Halperin that first dealt with the complaint filed against the surgeon.

Dr. Ness was convicted of rash actions and negligence in the care he gave to the patient in September 1998 at the Clalit HMO facility in Nahariya.

According to the ruling, it was "lucky" the patient suffered no serious damage from the treatment she received from Dr. Ness, but he caused a series of mishaps that endangered human life and diverged from the level of professionalism required of a surgeon.

According to the ruling, Dr. Ness did not use the proper monitoring equipment before anesthetizing the patient. He failed to ensure that the patient had been fasting prior to using certain drugs, and allowed her to leave the operating room on her own, even though she was groggy from the drugs.

He also failed to register the fact that he used a specific type of anesthetic.