Sheba Medical Center
An Israeli woman has donated a kidney to a recipient in Abu Dhabi, in a first-of-its kind arrangement that will bring a kidney from the United Arab Emirates to a different Israeli woman.
Israeli surgeons removed the kidney from Shani Markowitz Manshar, 39, at the Sheba Medical Center before loading it into a chilled ice-filled box ahead of its three and a half hour flight to the UAE’s capital of Abu Dhabi.
Meanwhile, a woman in Abu Dhabi underwent surgery and her kidney is en route to Israel, for a woman at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. The husband of the Rambam patient is giving a kidney to Markowitz’s mother, via a surgery at Rabin Medical Center, and Markowitz’s kidney has gone to the mother of the Abu Dhabi donor. She is due to be admitted to Sheba Medical Center later this week to receive a healthy organ from a relative of the donor who provided a kidney for the unnamed UAE patient.
Professor Eytan Mor, Head of the Transplant Centre in Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest hospital, said on Wednesday that the surgery was a success and would open the door for more life-saving organ donations in both countries: “Today is the start of a wonderful collaboration with our colleagues from the Emirates and Abu Dhabi”.
Dr. Rafi Bayer, Chairman of the Israel Center for Organ Transplantation, told the Times of Israel: “It’s the first time we have conducted such a process between Israel and an Arab state, and it really shows that medicine has no borders”.
It is one of several instances of health cooperation brought about by the year-old Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
