"A human and social storm will reach the Negev": About 150 members from the Sheba Medical Center toured the area where the Peres Medical Center will be located—the new public hospital of Be'er Sheva and the Negev. "Sheba Negev" is planned, established, and will be operated by the Sheba Medical Center—one of the ten best hospitals in the world—and will be jointly owned by the United and National Health Funds.
According to the plan, Sheba Negev will be the hospital of the future—an innovative, smart, and green medical center that will bring the best standard of public medicine to the residents of Negev. Beds will be staffed by leading medical professionals in their fields.
The medical center campus will be located near major access roads (Route 40 and Route 25) and will be surrounded by a comprehensive planning and development envelope that includes a passenger train station, a bus terminal, a business and industrial park, and a new residential neighborhood for hospital employees.
As part of the visit, the Sheba team received an overview of the area on which the hospital will be built from the Nature and Parks Authority and also heard from the planning team of the Be'er Sheva municipality about the development plans for the area surrounding the hospital campus.
Afterward, the delegation from Sheba met with Be'er Sheva Mayor Ruvik Danilovich; Prof. Nadav Davidovich, director of the School of Public Health at Ben Gurion University; and Dr. Muhammad Alanbari, chairman of the Yanabia Association, who spoke about the challenges of Bedouin society in the Negev.
"It is unlike anything that exists today in Israel or in the world"
During the tour of the hospital site, Prof. Yitshak Kreiss, director of the Sheba Medical Center, said: "You can try to explain in words why it is necessary and important to build a public hospital in the Negev, but we came here today not to explain, but to feel.
"We are bringing a human and social storm to the Negev—what we will build is a healthy city in the Negev. This is contemporary Zionism. The human and professional power of Sheba is a powerful engine, and with its help, we are going to open the hospital of the future," he said.
"It will be a smart, advanced, and innovative hospital unlike anything that exists today in Israel or in the world. We will not do it alone. We have excellent and determined allies in this project, chief among them Ruvik Danilovich, the mayor of Be'er Sheva, whose partnership is a force multiplier for Sheba. We also have strong partnerships with the United and National Health Insurance Funds," Kreiss concluded.
The long struggle for the establishment of the new public hospital in Be'er Sheva, culminating in the government's decision at the beginning of last week (Sunday, May 5), was led with determination by Mayor Danilovich over the past 14 years. According to him, "The new hospital in the Negev that will be built in Be'er Sheva proves that we do not have the privilege to give up. We started the fight to build a hospital in 2014. It took 10 years, but today I know that residents of the Negev are going to receive the best medicine in the world, not only in Israel," he said.
"It is impossible for citizens who live in one place in the country not to receive the medical services that citizens who live in another place in the same country receive," the mayor said. "The State of Israel must not give up the North and the South."