Edith Wolfson Medical Center

Edith Wolfson Medical Center is located in Holon, a city on the southern border of Tel Aviv.[3] The institution is registered as "Edith Wolfson Hospital," with the library code WOLF and a medical-library address of P.O. Box 5, Holon 58100.[7] It is also classified as an external medical organization in an academic research portal.[8]

The center is a multidisciplinary public hospital affiliated with Tel Aviv University's medical faculty; the 2018 report identifies that faculty by its then-used Sackler name.[3][1] Its published government profile describes a 10-acre complex with 708 beds, 40 departments, 70 outpatient clinics, and 14 operating rooms.[3] In 2018, official data listed 683 active licensed inpatient beds and 30 day-hospital beds, with the difference reflecting distinct reporting periods and definitions.[1] As of June 2016, the hospital reported 672 inpatient beds distributed among surgery (184 beds), internal medicine (330), women and maternity (77), and pediatrics (81), alongside 30 day-hospitalization beds.[9]

In 2018, the hospital listed approximately 2,600 staff and around 500 volunteers and other additional personnel.[1] A separate profile gives a figure of roughly 3,000 employees and volunteers combined, including more than 600 physicians.[2] The center encompasses more than 62 medical institutes, departments, and units, and maintains a research and innovation authority that coordinates research, academic activity, and innovation projects.[2]

Wolfson's institutional roots trace to the period immediately after Israel's 1948 War of Independence, when tens of thousands of newcomers arrived in Jaffa and the surrounding area in urgent need of medical care.[3] The hospital's 2011 anniversary magazine identifies three predecessor facilities: Zahalón, which opened in Jaffa in 1949 in the former Dajani family hospital to provide medical, inpatient, and maternity services to residents of Jaffa, Bat Yam, and Holon; Donolo A, which opened in 1950; and Donolo B, which opened in 1951. In 1958, the Ministry of Health merged these three facilities administratively as the Government Hospital of Jaffa.[10]

Planning for a new hospital building in Holon began in the 1960s, but construction was delayed for years.[11] Accounts differ on the dating of the associated Tel Giborim bribery affair: a Globes history identifies it as erupting in January 1963, while the hospital's anniversary magazine says the affair was exposed in 1964.[11][10] The case involved National Religious Party figures Yehuda Spiegel and Deputy Health Minister Yitzhak Rafael. Spiegel was convicted of bribery; Rafael was tried on suspicion of taking bribes but was acquitted after Spiegel declined to testify against him.[11] A donation from the Wolfson family ultimately enabled completion of the unfinished construction.[11]

The hospital was formally named for Lady Edith Wolfson at a ceremony in June 1973, attended by government officials and Sir Isaac Wolfson and his wife. The Wolfson family donated 20 million Israeli lira toward construction.[10] The new hospital opened on March 4, 1980, after 18 years of planning and construction; its first phase cost 600 million lira, and it was intended to serve roughly 300,000 residents of Holon, Bat Yam, and Jaffa.[10] The predecessor departments relocated from Jaffa to the new Holon facility at that time.[10]

The Edith Wolfson School of Nursing opened on May 10 of either 1975 or 1976 — the hospital's official About Us page gives 1975, while the 2011 anniversary magazine gives 1976 — as an independent regional school of the Ministry of Health. Sir Isaac Wolfson and Edith attended its inauguration ceremony. The original building had one floor and four classrooms and, according to the anniversary magazine, a four-person teaching staff.[12][10]

Wolfson listed 50 medical professions and specialties in its 2018 report.[1] Its fields of service include oncology, cardiac and thoracic surgery, pediatric cardiology, neonatal and pediatric intensive care, infectious diseases, emergency medicine, in-vitro fertilization, ophthalmology, and imaging, among many others.[1] The 2016 data also list oncology, medical genetics, gastroenterology, cardiothoracic and pediatric surgery, intensive care, cardiology, neurology, nephrology, psychiatry, and palliative medicine.[9]

In 2016, the hospital recorded 130,541 emergency-room visits, 311,678 outpatient-clinic and institute visits, 4,733 live births, and 13,546 operations.[9] In 2018, it recorded 214,357 inpatient days in general departments, 219,284 clinic and institute visits, 124,135 emergency-room visits, 4,357 live births, and 13,584 surgeries.[1]

The center serves a geographically and demographically diverse catchment area. In 2016, it identified a service population of approximately half a million residents across Holon, Bat Yam, western Rishon LeZion, southern Tel Aviv, Jaffa, and Azor.[9] The 2018 data describe the population as including a high proportion of people over 65, immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia, foreign workers and refugees from Africa, and residents of medium or lower socioeconomic status.[1] Then-director Yitzhak Berlovitz described the hospital's atmosphere as more intimate and family-like than that of larger hospitals, while also noting the fundraising and resource challenges he associated with its position near major central-Israel medical centers.[11]

The hospital's community outreach profile includes health-literacy programs, municipal public-health cooperation, translation services, and programs for deaf, blind, and disabled people. Specific initiatives include free low-radiation lung-cancer screening, a diabetes clinic for Arabic speakers, HIV testing and treatment, and an obstetrics and gynecology clinic offering free care to women without medical insurance, staffed by volunteer physicians, nurses, translators, and administrators.[3]

The establishment of Wolfson's cardiovascular surgery department was driven in significant part by Prof. Arie Schachner. When Schachner was appointed to start and lead the department, the hospital asked him to take a patient needing surgery; his first open-heart-surgery patient was a 64-year-old man who had waited about nine months for the procedure.[5] Schachner subsequently pushed for afternoon and early-evening cardiac surgery shifts to address long patient wait times and advocated for Wolfson to be permitted to operate on children, a practice that had previously been restricted to larger urban hospitals.[5]

A $2 million grant from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust later funded the Helmsley Pediatric Heart Institute within the Sylvan Adams Children's Hospital at Wolfson. The new institute expanded an existing pediatric cardiology unit that performed approximately 5,000 evaluations annually and occupied 750 square meters.[13]

The Sylvan Adams Children's Hospital, a seven-floor facility within the Wolfson campus, was inaugurated in 2021.[3][14] Philanthropist Sylvan Adams is identified as a major supporter of the project, which has been described as a "groundbreaking children's hospital."[15] Save a Child's Heart raised $50 million toward the children's hospital, whose total construction cost was $65 million.[16]

The hospital houses pediatric services, catheterization laboratories, and dedicated operating rooms.[3] Its hybrid operating room combines a conventional surgical suite with an image-guided interventional suite, allowing complex procedures such as open-heart surgery and catheterization to be conducted on the same patient simultaneously.[3][14] The children's emergency department handles approximately 25,000 visits per year.[14] The hospital's neonatal intensive care unit and premature baby unit have been named outstanding units in their fields by Israel's Ministry of Health for eight consecutive years.[3]

Save a Child's Heart (SACH) is a humanitarian pediatric cardiac program based at Wolfson Medical Center and is among the features for which the hospital is most widely recognized internationally. Founded in 1995, the program was co-founded by cardiothoracic surgeons Prof. Arie Schachner and Dr. Amram (Ami) Cohen, together with then-hospital director Dr. Moshe Mashiach.[4][5] A 2025 account recounted that Cohen joined Wolfson's cardiac surgery department and persuaded the hospital to bring two children from Ethiopia to Israel for life-saving operations as an early expression of the program's mission.[16]

SACH provides free critical pediatric heart surgery and follow-up care to children regardless of nationality, ethnicity, or religion, relying on private funds, volunteer medical care, and hostel services where needed.[4][17] The program is supported by an approximately 70-person pediatric cardiac-care team whose members contribute voluntary services beyond their regular state-determined salaries.[18] Children treated through SACH have ranged from a few days old to teenagers.[17] The program has reported a 96% success rate.[17]

The program also trains medical personnel from patients' home countries — including surgeons, cardiologists, anesthesiologists, intensive-care physicians, nurses, and heart-lung machine technicians — with the stated aim of building local treatment capacity in those countries.[16][17] By the time of a 2022 research-abstracts booklet, SACH had provided surgery to more than 5,000 children from 62 countries since 1995.[18] A 2025 account gave a figure of more than 8,000 children from 75 countries.[16] The program conducts roughly 300 to 400 procedures — including operations and catheterizations — in Israel annually.[16]

A 2003 entry in the U.S. Congressional Record documented a visit to Wolfson's pediatric intensive care unit and described SACH in operation: at that time, more than 800 children from developing countries had benefited from the program, with approximately one-third coming from Palestinian areas.[4] Palestinian patients continued to receive service during periods of acute security tension, including during suicide bombings in nearby Tel Aviv and Netanya, despite pressure on hospital space from emergency treatment of victims.[4] Among those treated was an infant from the family of imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti.[4] A free clinic at the hospital had by that point offered services to more than 3,000 Palestinians.[4]

The program's reach has extended to patients from countries with which Israel has no formal diplomatic relations. In late 2003, an Iraqi baby with serious heart problems was brought to Israel via Jordan — because her family would not fly directly to Israel — for treatment unavailable in Iraq. Israeli doctors operated on her for more than 21 hours without charge to her family.[17] In June 2016, a four-year-old from Brikama, Gambia, named Sanusey arrived in Israel on May 15 and underwent emergency surgery the following morning after collapsing in an examination room at Wolfson; he became the program's 4,000th patient.[17]