Prof. Mordechai Shani Awarded the Israel Prize

Prof. Mordechai Shani, director general of the Sheba Medical Center for 33 years, received the Israel Prize for "Lifetime Achievement" last summer. The Israel Prize is the highest, most distinguished award given by the State of Israel, granted annually in a range of fields from music to science. "Lifetime Achievement Awards" are rare and especially coveted. The prize committee said that it was awarding Prof. Shani "for a lifetime of exemplary public service, and for being the guiding light and father figure for medicine and the health system of Israel."

"Prof. Shani was central to the establishment and development of the Sheba Medical Center; the reorganization of Israel's psychiatric services; the founding of the school for health policy at Tel Aviv University; the drafting and passage of Israel's national health insurance policy and legislation; and the founding of many medical research institutes and scientific foundations (that have produced hundreds of scientific studies); and the mentoring of generations of doctors at Sheba."

"In all these capacities, and through his tenures as director general of the Israel Ministry of Health, Prof. Shani had an enormous impact on the health and welfare sectors in Israel, and specifically on the care for Israel's weakest strata and most vulnerable populations, in Israel's peripheral areas and all across the country. He is an enormously impressive and accomplished man by any international standard; the natural and undisputed leader of Israel's health system. Nobody has had a greater influence than him," concluded the prize committee in its formal award citation.