שתיל - שירותי תמיכה וייעוץ לקידום שינוי חברתי

It started with a sharp-eyed SHATIL staffer from our Social and Economic Justice Project noticing a small item in a local northern newspaper; led to an intensive advocacy and media campaign involving local cancer patients and many partners; and reached a mid-way success in which the government agreed to pay the transport costs of cancer patients who had to travel daily to Haifa for radiotherapy treatments (as this is the location of the only radiation center in the entire Northern region). And last week, after dozens of letters, phone calls, a petition, meetings with MK's, official parliamentary questions, cancer patients' visits in the Knesset and lots of SHATIL-generated media noise (including a TV report that accompanied a group of cancer patients to Haifa), Deputy Health Minister Rabbi Ya'akov Litzman (who in actuality is the Health Minister) promised to deliver the goods: a radiation center in Tzfat so that cancer patients in the northern periphery would no longer have to wait for months for appointments and then travel for hours every day to Haifa for a treatment that lasts minutes. 

 On May 26, Litzman announced his decision to open the center at a tour of Ziv Medical Center in Tzfat and then repeated his words to Yakir Shahaf, SHATIL's northern media and lobby consultant, who had worked long and hard on this 18-month-old campaign. Standing with Shahaf at that moment were cancer patients from the north who were greatly excited by the announcement.  

"Coordinated team work between SHATIL staff, active citizens, hospital and municipal representatives and members of Knesset brought about this wonderful success," said Amiram Goldin, director of SHATIL's Galil office. "Let's hope the process will soon be complete and that the necessary funds will arrive and we will soon see a radiotherapy center in Tzfat."