page_title: Soroka Medical Center
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Soroka Medical Center / History
caption_attribution_description: עברית: בית החולים המרכזי לנגב (המרכז הרפואי סורוקה) באוקטובר 1959
context_page_description: Soroka University Medical Center, part of the Clalit Health Services Group, is the only hospital in the Negev. Located in the city of Beersheba, Israel, it serves as the central hospital of the region and provides medical services to approximately one million residents of the South, from Kiryat Gat and Ashkelon to Eilat. Soroka is the third largest hospital in Israel, with 1,151 hospital beds, and it is spread over an area of 291 dunams in the center of Beer-Sheva.
  Soroka provides medical care to members of all populations in the region, including Negev Bedouins and Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is a teaching hospital affiliated with the faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev whose campus is adjacent to the hospital.
context_section_description: Following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Medical Corps established a temporary military hospital in one of the Ottoman government buildings in Beersheva. A year later, the hospital was transferred to a British government compound, where it was run by the Hadassah Medical Association and named after Dr. Chaim Yassky. 
  In 1949, Clalit Health Fund of the Hebrew Workers in Eretz Israel opened a clinic in the city to serve citizens who were members of the Histadrut. This clinic required hospital services for continued treatment. The nearest hospital was the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, but it was relatively far away, and patients had to travel and endure the poor road conditions of the time until they received treatment.
  In 1950, Beersheva was declared a civic authority, with the result that thousands of immigrants went to settle there. With the increase in the number of residents, the existing small hospital was unable to answer the needs of the population.
  Hadassah expressed willingness to expand its facilities, but due to budgetary constraints caused by the construction of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem they were not able to expand the hospital within a reasonable amount of time. 
  David Ben-Gurion, with his national approach, thought that the government should establish a hospital in the Negev and that it should not be established by Hadassah or the Histadrut, but the Health Ministry had no funds to invest in this effort.
  David Tuviyahu, who served as mayor of the city of Beersheva, joined the effort to establish a larger, more spacious and modern hospital. For this purpose, he met with various individuals, among them Moshe Soroka, chairman of the Clalit Health Services. Soroka expressed his willingness in principle for the Histadrut Health Fund to establish a hospital, but Minister of Health Yosef Serlin, who aspired to reduce the activity of the fund and transfer it to the state, objected to this idea. 
  In August 1955, Dov Begun, representative of the Histadrut in the United States, convinced the president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, David Dubinsky (1892–1982) to donate 1 million USD (a quarter million every year for four years) toward establishing a hospital in the Negev that would commemorate the organization's name.
  According to press reports at the time, Dubinsky had indicated that the ILGWU might make a further $500,000 available to the hospital after the $1,000,000 contribution was completed, as the estimated construction cost was $1,500,000.
  At the end of that year, a new government was formed and Yisrael Barzilai was appointed minister of health. He supported the establishment of the hospital and convinced Ben-Gurion to allow Clalit to set up a new hospital in Beersheva, while the Ministry of Health would establish one in Ashkelon (now Barzilai Medical Center). One of the things that convinced Ben-Gurion was his fear that the planned Sinai War would result in a shortage of hospital beds for wounded soldiers.
  On July 23, 1956, ground was broken on the new hospital. The hospital building was designed by architects Arieh Sharon and Benjamin Idelson.  
  In October 1959, the opening ceremony of the Central Hospital of the Negev was held. At first, the hospital contained several vital departments: the General Surgery Department (in the framework of which were the Otolaryngology Department, the Ophthalmology Department, and the Urology Department), two internal medicine departments, the Orthopedic Department, the Cardiology Institute, and the Radiology Institute. Later, additional departments were opened. 
  After the death of Moshe Soroka, the director of Clalit Health Organization in the 1950s who played a significant role in establishing the hospital, it was decided to name the hospital in his memory.
  In 2018, Shlomi Codish was named director-general of the hospital replacing Ehud Davidson, who held the post for five years.
caption: Soroka Hospital, 1959
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