While Israel is confronted with a lack of a doctor, Jonathan Gray, the president of the investment company Blackstone, and his wife, Mindy, $ 125 million in the health sciences and medical school of Tel Aviv.
The donation, via the Grays’ Foundation, is the largest ever at the University of Tel Aviv and is expected to increase the registration of the Medical School by a quarter. The funds will, among other things, support a new dormitory with 600 beds, fairs and new education facilities.
The limited capacity of Israel for medical training has contributed to a persistent shortage of doctors. From 2020, the number of doctors per head of the population was around 10 percent below the Average of countries in the Organization for Economic Corporation and Development.
“When Israeli students go to study medicine abroad, some of them remain – and for us it is a loss,” said Professor Ariel Porat, the President of the University. “This is the brain drain that people in many other areas talk about, but it is mainly acute with doctors.”
And the doctors of Israel are getting older and worsen the problem. Almost half of the country’s doctors are older than 50, and around 25 percent are at least 67 years old.
In response to the deficit, Israeli officials have announced a number of initiatives to recruit more doctors, including interest -free loans for Israeli medical students Studying abroad when they agree to return to Israel after graduation.
Mr. Porat said that the donation of the Grays probably has an impact on the wider Israeli health care system. Tel Aviv University is Israel’s largest universityAnd includes schools of medicine, dentistry, public health and 18 affiliated hospitals.
In addition to strengthening the total number of students, the donation is also expected to help the university to double the number of Arabian Israeli students at the medical school, partly offering stock markets and homes with a discount in the new dorms of the school, Mr Porat said. About a quarter of Israel doctors His Arabian Israeli.
The Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences of the university will be renamed the Gray Faculty D of Health Sciences. It was previously known as the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, after the billionaire Sackler family, owners of the Opioid Maker Purdue Pharma. The family, who are charged with stimulating the opioid epidemic, agreed to remove their name in 2023. At the time, the university said that it would enable the school to raise more money by offering name possibilities.
Mr. Gray and his wife, both American Jews, are active philanthropes. Their foundation focuses on supporting young people with a low income from the New York and Cancer study. Both say they feel a long -term band with Israel. Hamas’s attack on October 7 on Israel “has aroused a need to express that connection in a much more concrete way,” said Mr Gray in a statement.
Shortly after the attack, the Gray Foundation gave $ 1 million to a program that pays for eighth classes in public and charter schools in New York To visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage In Lower Manhattan.
While Mr Gray and his wife were looking for a larger donation, they met Mr. for the first time last year. Porat in New York. The Grays later traveled to Israel and met university leadership, the medical faculty and students.
“We can’t think of a better way to speed up healing,” they said in a statement, “than to support an institution that touches the lives of so much.”
- Advertisement -
