Soroka Medical Center

Soroka is part of Clalit Health Services and is located in Beersheba, beside Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.[6][7] Its regional importance rests on the combination of general hospital services, advanced specialist care, emergency medicine, and university teaching.[1][3] It is southern Israel’s sole tertiary and Level 1 trauma center, a role that places it at the center of the region’s response to severe injuries and mass-casualty incidents.[8]

A hospital profile described a campus of approximately 29 hectares, or 70 acres, with more than 200,000 square meters of built space and close to 1,200 beds.[1] The hospital’s catchment extends south to Eilat, including sparsely populated territory between Yeroham and Eilat.[1] Its regional responsibilities consequently extend well beyond the city in which it stands.[1]

The scale of Soroka’s activity was already substantial by its fiftieth anniversary: a 2010 account described it as Israel’s second-largest hospital, providing primary, secondary, and tertiary care to one million people between Kiryat Gat and Eilat.[3] That account recorded more than 200,000 emergency visits, 90,000 admissions, 32,000 operations, and 13,000 births annually.[3] In 2019, emergency-department attendance was reported at 250,000 patients annually, and the department was described as Israel’s busiest.[9]

Moshe Soroka conceived the project for a hospital in Beersheba serving the Negev in 1955.[10] A pioneer of public medicine and a manager of Clalit Health Services, he advanced the undertaking at a time when southern Israel lacked a central hospital.[10] Beersheba’s population quadrupled between the beginning and end of the 1950s, adding urgency to the project.[10] David Ben-Gurion supported its establishment despite Clalit’s financial difficulties, and Clalit established the institution.[10]

Medical services in the town before the new campus opened operated under severe constraints.[11] When Dr. Wilhelmina Cohen arrived in Beersheba from the Netherlands in 1952 to establish a pediatric ward, the town had 14,500 residents, while approximately 12,000 Bedouins lived in scattered nearby communities.[11] Immigrants settling in new development towns added to the population needing care.[11] The hospital then had only 50 beds, approximately 20 designated for pediatrics, although its children’s ward frequently treated between 40 and 60 children simultaneously.[11]

For five years Cohen was the pediatric department’s only physician, working 30 night shifts each month.[11] Without a neonatal or premature-infant unit, she also treated newborns; the absence of pediatric pathologists sometimes required her to perform autopsies.[11] Outside the hospital, she made house calls to remote communities, initially traveling by Vespa and later by car.[11] Dr. Amiram Yosef joined her in 1957.[11]

The new hospital was inaugurated in October 1959, initially under the name “The Medical Center for the Negev,” and was subsequently named for Moshe Soroka.[10] At inauguration, its adult building contained 150 beds and its women’s and maternity building contained 70.[10] The institution began as a small community hospital after a difficult establishment process and celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in December 2009.[3]

Budget shortages persisted during its early years, and the new hospital still lacked air conditioning in 1959 because of financial constraints.[11] Pediatric overcrowding could be severe, with children placed two or three to a bed and infants suffering from diarrhea sharing space with patients who had tuberculosis or other contagious diseases.[11] Research described in the hospital’s historical account associated the establishment of the hospital, particularly the children’s ward, with increased life expectancy among Bedouin children and fewer sick days among Jewish children; no numerical estimates were supplied.[11]

Soroka’s early patient population included Beersheba residents, immigrants in development towns, and Bedouins living in surrounding communities.[11] Its staff was similarly diverse: the first director, Prof. Stern, recalled an early workforce of 35 physicians speaking 18 different languages, treating a population that also spoke many languages.[11]

Persistent staffing shortages led the hospital to send its first overseas recruitment mission in 1957, encouraging Jewish physicians to immigrate to Israel and work in the Negev.[11] A special ulpan combined Hebrew instruction with medical training.[11] During the following decade, 13 groups comprising 300 doctors came to Israel specifically to work at Soroka.[11] Despite these recruitment efforts, a 1966 assessment found that 30 percent of the medical staff required in the Negev was still missing.[11]

Soroka has also treated Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.[12] Wafa al-Bass was hospitalized there for severe burns from December 2004 to January 2005 and subsequently held medical authorization for an examination at the hospital.[12]

Regional inequalities remained a concern for hospital leadership decades later.[13][14] In 2014 coverage, director Ehud Davidson said Negev residents had fewer physicians, hospital beds, and medical facilities than residents of central Israel.[14] In a separate interview, he claimed a six-to-eight-year life-expectancy disadvantage.[13] Both were attributed assessments, not independently verified current measurements.[13][14]

Soroka was among Beersheba’s early academic, scientific, and cultural institutions and became a major local employer.[15] An encyclopedia account recorded more than 2,000 employees, although it did not specify the year of that figure.[15] Its proximity to Ben-Gurion University also made the hospital a participant in the city’s research and innovation development.[7]

In 2020, Soroka was a partner in plans for a Beersheba innovation district advanced with the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Construction and Housing, the municipality, and Ben-Gurion University.[16] The proposed district would connect the hospital and university with neighboring residential areas, an IDF computer-center site, and the railway-station area.[16]

In 2024, Soroka placed sixth among Israeli hospitals in Newsweek’s country rankings.[17] The selection process considered research, treatment, innovation, recommendations from an international survey of 80,000 physicians, hospital managers, and health professionals, patient-satisfaction surveys, and a treatment quality-and-safety index.[17]

Architects Arieh Sharon and Benjamin Idelson designed Soroka as a campus adapted to the Negev’s desert climate.[10] Their concept envisaged an oasis-like environment in which trees would create a more comfortable microclimate, with relatively small hospital buildings placed among them around interior courtyards.[10] Planning records cover the period from 1955 to 1959.[10]

The initial scheme occupied 300 dunams and included maternity, women’s, and children’s pavilions, a nursing school, staff housing, service buildings, and a central hospital building.[10] The emergency building stood at the campus entrance and was linked to the central building by a covered passage 200 meters long.[10] This central building occupied 22,000 square meters and housed orthopedic, internal medicine, surgical, ophthalmology, and ear, nose, and throat departments, together with operating rooms and pharmacies.[10]

The design allowed for subsequent expansion, and Solel Boneh constructed the central building over three years.[10] Sharon received the Israel Prize for architecture for his hospital planning generally and Soroka in particular.[10] The prize judges praised the design’s clear response to the functional requirements of a public hospital and its use of natural ventilation in a desert environment.[10]

Ben-Gurion University’s Medical School opened adjacent to Soroka in 1974, with a mission that included training humane and skilled physicians and advancing medical education and research.[3] The university’s Faculty of Health Sciences, founded the same year, is located on the hospital campus.[18] Its educational program integrated academic theory and clinical care from the first year, with an emphasis on community medicine.[18]

Students and faculty worked at Soroka and traveled to development towns, kibbutzim, and Bedouin encampments.[18] A substantial Department of Family Physicians developed in the Negev within the combined faculty and hospital framework.[3] Soroka’s contribution also extended deeply into university research: a health-services account reported that more than 90 percent of Ben-Gurion University’s clinical researchers came from the medical center.[19]

The hospital’s Genetics Institute investigated rare hereditary diseases among neighboring Negev Bedouin communities.[20] A research group headed by Professor Rivka Carmi combined clinical genetics with sociological research, while clinical services included genetic counseling and prenatal screening.[20] Its work used family and population patterns to locate genes on chromosomes and identify disease-causing mutations.[20] The population’s preserved genetic structure and the increased frequency of some mutations associated with consanguineous marriage provided opportunities to investigate particular hereditary conditions.[20]

At the time of one account, Carmi’s group had identified twelve genes associated with different diseases and detected a mutation in one syndrome.[20] Studying a Bedouin family in which deafness was common yielded a deafness-related mutation, while other work identified three separate genes independently responsible for Bardet-Biedl syndrome, which can include obesity among its features.[20] These results describe the research at the time of that account, rather than the institute’s present cumulative output.[20]

The institute’s community-oriented approach held that clinical research should return practical benefits to the population making it possible.[20] Researchers sought to provide diagnostic tools, including prenatal screening where available, to families whose participation helped identify disease genes.[20] A joint community project with the Ministry of Health used peer educators to explain available services and encourage families to use them.[20]

Soroka also participated in international collaborative research.[21] In 2001, it was working with Columbia University on diarrheal diseases among Arab and Jewish children.[21] The project examined mechanisms underlying symptomatic and asymptomatic infection with Cryptosporidium, Giardia lamblia, and E. coli.[21]

During the Six-Day War in 1967, Soroka was among the principal Israeli hospitals prepared to receive wounded people immediately after hostilities began.[19] Underground beds, operating and laboratory facilities, and equipment were available, while casualty teams worked around the clock.[19] Helicopters helped transport the wounded to hospitals.[19] Soroka’s leadership subsequently described continuous emergency readiness dating from its reception of casualties from the Egyptian front in 1967.[1]

During fighting in Gaza in 2014, Soroka was approximately an eight-to-nine-minute helicopter flight from the front, about seven minutes closer than hospitals in central Israel.[14] By the time of a contemporary report, approximately 1,000 injured people, including 600 soldiers, had passed through the hospital, which had handled 70 helicopter evacuations.[14] Its Sammy Ofer intensive care unit then had 16 beds, and the director said the hospital was large enough to manage the influx without drawing on personnel reserves.[14]

Facilities nevertheless faced substantial development and protection needs.[14] In 2014, construction had begun on a cancer center expected to cost $170 million, of which $70 million had been secured.[14] The neonatal unit was then described as 25 years old, overcrowded, outdated, and unreinforced against rockets; its patients were moved elsewhere during the fighting.[14]

A 2019 emergency-department and trauma-center project, named for Frances and Nathan Kirsh, was budgeted at $12 million, with Clalit matching donations.[9] Plans called for 116 additional beds, including eight trauma-unit beds, with completion then expected in 2021.[9] The expansion was linked to population growth, an anticipated 30 percent increase in Beersheba’s population, and the planned relocation of military bases to the Negev.[9]

In 2022, only 200 of Soroka’s 1,200 beds were reported to be in areas considered able to withstand attacks.[22] The same report said that only one of its two operating theaters and one of its five catheterization rooms were protected.[22] The hospital warned that inadequate protection could impair its ability to provide medical services during a future conflict.[22]

Soroka received hundreds of wounded people during the Hamas-led terrorist attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.[23][24] It declared a mass-casualty incident at approximately 8 a.m. and called in medical staff.[23] Additional assistance from other medical centers brought 28 nurses and 18 physicians to the hospital by that evening.[23] Existing inpatients were moved to fortified areas, and 190 were discharged to create capacity for incoming casualties.[23]

One analysis examined 673 injured patients arriving between 6:30 a.m. on October 7 and 7 a.m. on October 8.[25] Arrivals peaked at 83 injured people per hour; the mean patient age was 29.6 years, and gunshot and shrapnel wounds predominated.[25] Approximately half were hospitalized at Soroka or transferred elsewhere for definitive care after initial treatment.[25]

An account drawing on a paper by Soroka physicians recorded 676 wounded arrivals between 7:30 a.m. and midnight.[23] During the initial 24-hour period, 120 critically wounded patients were treated in the trauma unit, 96 operations were performed, 200 units of blood were transfused, and 209 patients were admitted.[23] Director-general Shlomi Codish separately described 674 patients treated on October 7, more than twice the 300 casualties anticipated in the hospital’s largest drill.[1]

A study focused on secondary ambulance transfers reported that Soroka received 650 victims and transferred 26 patients to other hospitals, including five transported in Advanced Life Support ambulances.[26] Secondary transfers in that analysis began five hours after the event started and continued for approximately twelve hours, helping relieve the hospitals nearest the attack.[26] A broader operational account described transfers beginning early on October 8 and reaching 130 patients within several days.[23]

Imaging services expanded sharply during the crisis.[8] In an analysis of the first 24 hours, 461 patients underwent imaging, with 431 imaging cases related to the incident.[8] Staffing increased to more than four times routine levels, and CT scanners not ordinarily assigned to such work were repurposed.[8] Median time from CT order to completion fell to 28 minutes, compared with a 54-minute baseline measured over twelve months, while radiography turnaround increased from 43 to 49 minutes.[8]

A separate emergency-preparedness study counted 624 victims in Soroka’s emergency department from the morning of October 7 until midnight, the highest total among the nineteen emergency departments examined.[24] Across the hospitals studied, additional care areas were opened and staff recalled, but the analysis also identified instances of compromised care and a need for more secondary transfers.[24] The different Soroka totals represent the populations and observation periods used by the individual studies and accounts, rather than one uniform measure.[25][24]

The hospital established an information center for families seeking wounded or missing relatives.[23] On the second day of the war, it opened daycare facilities for hundreds of employees’ children and provided supportive care to caregivers and first responders.[23] In a later account, Codish said Soroka had treated 4,000 war-related patients and experienced more than 300 helicopter landings over a year and a half.[1]

An Iranian ballistic missile directly struck Soroka’s old surgical ward on June 19, 2025, causing extensive damage.[4] The ward had been evacuated in preceding days, and patients and staff were in shelters when the missile hit.[4] Damage extended to other hospital buildings, and Soroka temporarily closed to new patients except in life-threatening cases.[4]

Before the strike, the hospital had moved patients out of less protected areas, evacuated the surgical building’s upper story, and closed eight unprotected operating theaters.[1] Approximately 20 percent of beds were fully sheltered, while patients in roughly 50 to 60 percent of beds had access to sheltered areas.[1] Patients were relocated to more secure spaces, including an underground shelter originally constructed in the 1970s.[1]

A later reconstruction account reported no fatalities and a few slight injuries, attributing the limited casualties to the evacuation of the surgical building into an underground facility.[5] Other reports used wider counts: one recorded 68 wounded in the barrage that struck Soroka, while another counted 89 injured across Soroka and strike sites in central Israel, including three seriously.[27][28] The physical destruction included wards, operating theaters, laboratories, specialist units, and offices.[5] An entire floor of research laboratories burned, and eight of the hospital’s nineteen operating theaters were put out of action.[5]

Damage also affected Ben-Gurion University facilities at Soroka.[29] Two floors of its Faculty of Medicine were damaged, including cancer and Alzheimer’s research laboratories, while anatomy and dissection rooms were destroyed.[29] The university president estimated losses from three missile strikes at NIS 200–400 million; that estimate concerned university damage, not Soroka’s overall losses.[29]

In November 2025, the state allocated NIS 360 million for Soroka’s rehabilitation, while philanthropist Sylvan Adams pledged $100 million, described as the largest donation in the hospital’s history.[30] The Koum Family Foundation contributed $50 million and the Helmsley Charitable Trust $15 million toward rehabilitation and rebuilding.[30] Codish said the work needed to combine repair of damaged buildings with longstanding expansion and reinforcement plans.[30]

By June 2026, restoration included reconstruction of the destroyed operating-room complex and construction of three additional protected operating rooms.[31] The damaged Northern Surgical Inpatient Building was identified as the first structure built when Soroka opened in 1959.[31] Before the strike, it accommodated inpatient wards, operating rooms, clinical and research laboratories, allied health services, and administrative offices; surrounding buildings and infrastructure also required repairs.[31] Medical services continued during the crisis.[31]

A planned eleven-story protected inpatient tower was to contain medical departments, a Heart Center, a Neuroscience and Brain Center, operating rooms, and catheterization laboratories.[31] Underground parking beneath it was designed for rapid conversion into an emergency hospital.[31] Soroka and the Beersheba Municipality were also advancing development intended to double the hospital’s built area, adding mixed-use towers, staff housing, outpatient facilities, and parking.[31]

In May 2026, the Southern Planning and Building Committee approved a five-building development plan covering 45 dunams along Rager Boulevard.[5] It included three towers of up to thirty floors and an eleven-floor reinforced inpatient building, with 230,000 square meters of planned space.[5] Specified components included eighty hotel rooms, 300 special housing units for hospital staff, 140,000 square meters of offices, and 6,500 square meters of commercial space.[5] The project implemented a November 2025 government decision budgeting NIS 360 million for 2026–2030 and requiring a reinforced tower to protect at least 70 percent of inpatient beds and other critical functions.[5]

The intended target of the June 2025 missile strike was disputed.[4] Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed that a nearby military and intelligence headquarters was the target, while the IDF denied that Soroka was a military facility and rejected claims that military equipment lay beneath it.[4] Iranian state reporting separately identified a military command-and-intelligence site at nearby Gav-Yam Technology Park as the principal target.[32] Soroka’s director-general characterized the strike as deliberate, but the cited coverage does not independently establish the attack’s intent.[4]