Shamir Medical Center

Shamir Medical Center is located in Tzrifin, with an official address of Tzrifin, Be'er Ya'akov 70300.[2] Its service area covers roughly one million to more than 1.5 million residents — figures that vary by source and period — including communities such as Rishon LeZion, Ness Ziona, Ramla, Lod, Be'er Ya'akov, Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut, Rehovot, Beit Shemesh, and Ashdod.[5][3]

As of 2019, the hospital occupied approximately 280 dunams and maintained 886 inpatient beds.[6] A 2017 profile described it as a government hospital with 850 beds, while another report from that year counted about 3,500 medical staff and more than 800 inpatient beds.[7][5] In 2017, it was reported to provide most medical services except organ transplants and heart and brain surgery; the 2019 expansion plan proposed an organ-transplant center and neurosurgery capabilities.[5][6] Its campus is also home to the Hebrew University's Nursing School and schools for physiotherapy and medical imaging technicians.[4]

The site's medical history begins before Israeli statehood. The hospital's official timeline traces its origins to an Ottoman military hospital established in 1912 at the Sarafand camp, which passed into British service during the First World War.[1] The British hospital closed on January 22, 1948, with 100 beds; its buildings had also served as a Royal Air Force facility and, during the Second World War, housed soldiers' family members.[1] Following the British evacuation, Palmach units took over the hospital and camp.[1]

In September 1948, under an order from Chief Medical Officer Dr. Haim Sheba, the military medical service transferred its training base, transit camp, and medic school to Sarafand as preparations for a hospital advanced.[1] On October 22, 1948, Hospital No. 13 opened at Sarafand with 100 beds, designed for patients able to care for themselves, including those continuing malaria treatment and recovering from orthopedic or surgical procedures.[1] A psychiatric hospital opened beside the main facility on February 13, 1949, and on March 1 of that year, Hospital No. 8 (Bilou) merged with the Sarafand hospital, which was thereafter designated a general hospital under director Major Dr. Moshe (Max) Lindenfeld.[1]

In its early decades, the hospital operated from wooden barracks described as being in very poor condition.[7] After the Six-Day War, supporters organized a worldwide "Evacuate the Barracks" campaign — conducted through what became the Friends of Assaf Harofeh Medical Center — that helped spur the hospital's later physical development.[7] The medical library was established in 1950 and today holds antique medical textbooks dating to the nineteenth century, more than 6,000 electronic journals, and over 1,000 electronic books.[8]

In April 2017, following a government instruction, the hospital was renamed Shamir Medical Center (Assaf Harofeh) in honor of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.[1] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Health Minister Ya'acov Litzman unveiled the naming plaque alongside members of the Shamir family.[9] The hospital's previous name honored Assaf ben Berachyahu, a Jewish physician who lived near Tiberias — described in different sources as a fifth- or sixth-century figure — and who is credited with co-authoring a Hebrew medical text containing therapeutic guidance, protocols, and a physicians' oath combining elements of the Hippocratic tradition with Jewish beliefs.[9][5]

Shamir operates a level-one trauma center and emergency department, alongside a broad range of inpatient and outpatient services.[10] These include internal medicine and subspecialties, obstetrics and gynecology, fertility treatment and IVF, surgical specialties, adult and pediatric intensive care, coronary and neonatal intensive care, pediatric and geriatric care, orthopedics, diagnostic imaging, cancer care, rehabilitation, genetics, pathology, and robotic surgery.[10] The hospital prohibits private medical services on campus, a policy in force as of the 2017 profile.[7]

In 2019, the emergency department recorded 151,871 patient visits, outpatient consultation clinics saw more than 484,686 patients, and 8,245 babies were born in the obstetric unit.[10] The hospital's overall inpatient occupancy rate exceeded 90 percent that year.[10] Shamir has also distinguished itself in maternity care: it was the first Israeli hospital to introduce a policy of keeping mother and newborn together after birth, received a Ministry of Health award for this approach, and reported one of the country's lowest cesarean rates.[11] It was also the first Israeli hospital to perform a cesarean birth with mother and baby kept together.[11]

The emergency department itself had 67 beds, according to deputy director Dr. Daniel Trotzky.[12] The hospital holds Joint Commission International accreditation, received in February 2014, and also passed JCI's academic examination confirming that it meets academic and research standards.[3]

Established in 1997, the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research is one of Shamir's most prominent specialized units.[13] The center operates what it describes as the largest and most sophisticated multiplace hyperbaric oxygen chambers in the world, and provides treatment for conditions including chronic non-healing wounds, decompression sickness, carbon monoxide intoxication, and acute retinal artery occlusion.[13]

The Sagol Center's research extends to neuroplasticity and possible regenerative effects of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, with clinical work covering age-related cognitive and functional decline, stroke, traumatic brain injury, and chronic pain syndrome.[13] The hospital has described the center as one of the leading hyperbaric medicine facilities in the world.[14] During the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023, the center's capabilities were applied to treating soldiers with severe wartime injuries, including complex fungal infections encountered in wounded combatants returning from Gaza.[14]

Shamir is affiliated with Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Medicine and supervises intern and resident training across specialty and subspecialty fields.[4] The campus hosts the Hebrew University's Nursing School as well as schools for physiotherapy and medical imaging technicians.[4] The center reports an average of approximately 200 peer-reviewed publications annually and maintains close to 800 ongoing research projects at any given time.[4]

In 2021, the Helmsley Charitable Trust awarded the hospital $8.8 million to rebuild and expand its cancer institute.[15] The planned Helmsley Multidisciplinary Oncology Center was designed to add a treatment clinic and palliative-care facility, convert the existing ground floor into an outpatient center, and build an underground level for radiotherapy; the project was also to be formally affiliated with Tel Aviv University.[15]

In 2023, Shamir and Magen David Adom launched a joint pre-hospital ECMO program, deploying a team of paramedics, nurses, and Shamir physicians trained to connect cardiac-arrest patients to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation before reaching the hospital.[16] The center characterized this as the first such service in Israel and the Middle East, reporting that the team had already saved several patients' lives.[16]

Shamir has invested substantially in protected infrastructure to allow continued operation during security emergencies. A project announced in 2020 proposed converting a fortified section of the hospital's underground parking lot into a 150-bed emergency hospitalization complex, with capacity earmarked in part for COVID-19 patients; estimated conversion costs were NIS 26 million, with an additional NIS 25 million needed for equipment.[17] By the time the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, this underground facility was operational and was activated from the war's first day, with non-mobile inpatients transferred there.[18]

Deputy director Dr. Daniel Trotzky described the hospital's emergency protocol as involving the mobilization of trauma specialists, orthopedists, surgeons, vascular experts, nurses, intensive-care staff, and laboratory technicians, alongside reinforcement of the emergency department and the discharge or ward transfer of existing patients to free capacity.[12] He noted that beds on a sheltered underground floor were allocated for patients who could not reach a safe room during an alert, while cautioning that some wards and operating rooms lacked shielding.[12]

When the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks struck, Shamir treated 170 casualties in the first 24 hours and 280 wounded people within the first week.[12] The hospital received wounded soldiers by helicopter — including 15 transported by Sikorsky CH-53 helicopters and three by Black Hawks — and also accepted patients transferred from Barzilai and Soroka medical centers.[12] By December 2024, the hospital had treated more than 600 people wounded in the war, including soldiers with very serious injuries.[14] The Jewish Agency's Fund for Victims of Terror visited Shamir on October 10, 2023, to support Ronen (Ronnie) Gabay, a wounded Sderot security coordinator who was among the first to respond on October 7 and who had sustained gunshot and shrapnel wounds.[19]

In late November 2023, Shamir was the first stop for 23 Thai nationals and one Filipino released after 54 days in captivity as hostages.[20] The hospital's director noted that the returning hostages preferred to remain together rather than be separated into individual rooms, and the hospital adapted its planning accordingly, deploying a multidisciplinary team for medical and psychological care.[20]

During continued wartime operations in 2025, Shamir's emergency hospital functioned inside an underground parking area, and its fortified maternity ward occupied space previously used as a fitness center.[21] A March 2026 report described a protected underground complex with more than 300 inpatient beds and three equipped operating rooms, as well as two protected rooms in the main operating-theatre complex and a further protected operating room in the maternity building.[22] Intensive-care, internal-medicine, orthopedic, and surgical wards were among those relocated underground, given the limited mobility of many patients in those units.[22]

Government decisions from 2016 initiated a planned transformation of Shamir into a larger medical campus.[4] The hospital's own overview describes a planned increase from 866 to 1,300 beds, alongside expanded treatment facilities, new buildings, and additional medical team training.[4]

A 2019 expansion plan proposed adding approximately 140 dunams to the campus and roughly 1,500 beds, with construction phased through to a projected completion in 2048.[6] That plan described adding an organ-transplant center and neurosurgery capabilities, expanding trauma services, and transferring to the campus the National Center of Forensic Medicine, the Ministry of Health's national laboratories, Be'er Ya'akov's psychiatric center, and the geriatric Shmuel Harofe hospital.[6] A subsequent 2020 planning stage described adding 150 dunams to create a 413-dunam medical campus with up to 1.1 million square meters of building rights, located west of Highway 44 between Be'er Ya'akov and Rishon LeZion.[23] That plan projected meeting regional population needs through 2045 and was promoted jointly by the Israel Land Authority and the Ministry of Health.[23]

By March 2026, proposed projects included a new protected emergency department, an integrated oncology center, expanded inpatient and intensive-care services, and a new maternity department with private rooms.[22] Population growth in the hospital's service area — encompassing Be'er Ya'akov, Rishon LeZion, Ramla, Ness Ziona, and surrounding communities — was consistently cited as the primary driver of the planned expansion.[22]

Shamir Medical Center's predecessor institution, Assaf Harofeh, treated a survivor of the May 30, 1972 Lod Airport terrorist attack, as documented in a U.S. Department of Justice Foreign Claims Settlement Commission decision.[24] The claimant testified that she was 15 years old when she was brought to the hospital, where she was treated for approximately two weeks for a wound to the left buttock, receiving daily cleaning and dressing before being discharged on June 13, 1972.[24]

On December 20, 2022, Nasser Abu Hmeid died of cancer at Asaf Harofeh while in Israeli custody.[25] Media-accuracy organization CAMERA reported the death and noted that it had prompted AFP to correct captions that had incorrectly described him as dying in prison.[25]