Alliance for Patient Safety

Rami Tveria:

I am here, and exactly on Friday, the 24^th of February is going to be the second anniversary to Eden’s death. Eden had epilepsy. I brought her over to obtain a second opinion at the Tel Hashomer Hospital. She underwent a normal examination, a video EEG exam. It’s not like I brought her with some violent infection to the Emergency Room, or anything like that. She was supposed to stay there for the entire week. On her second night she suffered from a severe epileptic attack, as she was off her medication. This was under the instruction of Prof. Bruria Ben Zeev, and the nurse fell asleep in her watch by the monitors, three hours later my wife found her lying lifeless in her bed.

I am here to cry Eden’s cry. I will not be able to bring her back, and this is not the reason I am here, But I do know that since Eden has passed away and we established the Garden of Eden in Purple Association, with the goal to increase awareness to epilepsy, and I have been going through grave experiences with the patients who come to see us and call us because they are scared of checking into a hospital and undergoing this routine exam. And they are afraid of this exam. Even though I was told that people do not die of epilepsy in the last ten years.

The Ministry of Health’s committee which was set to investigate the case has published a very harsh report on the way Tel Hashomer hospital has handled the case. Yes it is a big hospital in the center, and the report was very harsh. But what do they do with this report?

I regret to say that the nurse came back to work two weeks after the event. She came back to work at another department, not at the Video EEG Department. I appealed about this matter a few weeks ago, why just the gate keeper? Where are all the patients? Where is the Department Director? Where is the Hospital Director who was awarded with managing Hadassah Hospital? What is this thing? Where do we live? I am asking you, representatives of the public.

I think that if all these big wigs – and now an talking about what happened to the elderly, I am actually making the connection – everybody speaks, all the experts. How come they only catch the small care takers who were the people on the ground? Where was the hospital management? Where were all the great caretakers, when we need them? And I believe that until the person in charge, at the highest level will pay the price, we will never learn from all these negligence cases, and they will come back, claiming more, every day, actually every day.

This is just unbearable. You have no idea – I am strengthening Amiad’s words – you have no idea what kind of days I am going through. I am a theatre teacher in a school, but I am unable to teach for two years now. It is hard for me to come to class and hear Eden’s name. and if you will not make sure there are negligence events of this sort, who will? I brought a healthy child to the hospital and she came out in a coffin. What is this. And there is a published report by the Ministry of Health – what do they do with the report? what do they do with the report? It has no teeth. And I am told that the gate keeper is on her second appeal, the gate keeper is still the one to blame.