Avraham Rivkind

Professor Avraham "Avi" Rivkind is the head of the department of general surgery and the trauma unit of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, Israel. He is admired and revered "for refusing to give up on the most hopeless patients, such as the soldier who was shot in the heart and pronounced dead on arrival and whom Rivkind revived." This soldier was Shimon Ohana, age 18, of the Border Police.

Avraham Rivkind was born in 1949 and served in the Israel Defense Forces from 1967 to 1970. He completed his pre-medical studies at the University of Siena in Italy and received his Doctorate in Medicine from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1980. He set up the world-famous Trauma Unit of Hadassah Hospital.

Dr. Rivkind is also the official Advisor to the Surgeon General of the IDF on trauma and ethics. He was the personal physician to the late president of the State of Israel, Mr Ezer Weizman. Fellowship in traumatology and critical care, (MIEMSS) Baltimore, Maryland. Visiting Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Southern California in Trauma and Fore-gut surgery. Chairperson of the Israel COT & Advanced Trauma Life Support.

Dr. Rivkind would very much like to invite Ismail Haniyeh, Prime Minister of Palestine, to Hadassah Hospital. "I would start by showing him a 14-year old Palestinian boy I operated on last week - and who was injured when a bomb he was working with blew up. I would ask Haniyeh, 'Look at this boy. Would you want your son to look like this?' And then I would show him the care this boy is getting here ... And I'll ask him, 'Isn't this a better way to live between us?' "

Sources
 * "Jerusalem Diarist - Ward of the State" by Yossi Klein Halevi in the April 10, 2006 issue of New Republic, an influential weekly magazine of news and opinion.
 * "Awaiting the Wounded," by Dr. Avraham Rivkind, Jewish World, August 18, 2002

See also
 * Ahmed Eid