7-year-old recipient of donated kidney
by: Judy Siegel-Itzkovich | The Jerusalem Post
January 8, 2013
The parents of 15-year-old Liel Naomi, who died as a result of edema of the brain, donated organs that saved the lives of four people aged seven to 68.
According to the National Transplant Center, the two lungs were given to a 68-year-old woman at the Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus; a liver to a 54-year-old woman at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem's Ein Kerem; a kidney and pancreas to a 45-year-old woman at Sourasky Medical Center; and a kidney to a seven-year-old girl at Schneider Medical Center in Petah Tikva.
The donor died after a severe epileptic attack and was hospitalized at the Western Galilee Government Hospital in Nahariya. Brain edema developed immediately, and by Monday her death was pronounced.
Her family said saving lives was foremost, and that the organ donations would commemorate the girl's life.
The transplants were the first to be performed in 2013.
For the estimated 250 million people worldwide who suffer from rare diseases, there is little hope for diagnosis or treatment. Because each individual disease impacts so few people, hardly any funding is allocated to research, leaving many without medical options.
On June 25, 2008, American Friends of Rabin Medical Center
held the first event of a newly-formed group, Wall Street,
High Tech and Life Sciences industries (WHALE), to benefit the
new Emergency and Trauma Center at Rabin Medical Center.
Any hospital in Israel would have been proud to deliver her baby, but Noa Rotman, the granddaughter of the late Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin, decided to give birth at the hospital which bears his name, Rabin Medical Center.