Doctors from Ruth Rappaport Children’s Hospital and Rabat Children’s Hospital met virtually for the first time to share knowledge and experience, forging professional ties to facilitate collaboration between the two pediatric medical facilities.
Professor Myriam Ben-Arush. Photography: Rambam HCC
For the first time ever, physicians from Rambam Health Care Campus’s Ruth Rappaport Children’s Hospital and Rabat Children’s Hospital conducted a joint tumor board meeting to discuss individual pediatric cancer cases and share knowledge. The meeting was held via Zoom on Tuesday, January 26th, and the topic under discussion was pediatric central nervous system malignant tumors, which are the leading cause of cancer death in children in the United States.
The meeting opened with greetings from Dr. Michael Halberthal, Rambam’s General Director, and participants were introduced by Professor Myriam Ben Arush, former Director of the Pediatric Division in Ruth Rappaport Children’s Hospital as well as former Director of the hospital’s Joan & Sanford Weill Division of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation, and Professor Laila Hessissen, a Professor of Pediatrics in the Medical School of Rabat and a Pediatric Hematology Oncologist at the Pediatric Hematology Oncology Center of Rabat.
The scientific program included a lecture about low grade gliomas—a type of brain tumor—given by Professor Eric Bouffet from The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, a lecture about the epidemiology of brain tumors in Rabat, presented by Professor Hessissen, and a lecture about the epidemiology of brain tumors at Rambam, given by Professor Ben Arush. The lectures were followed by individual case presentations by physicians from each institution.
The meeting was deemed a success by those in attendance. Notes Professor Ben Arush, “We are all very proud to start this collaboration, which I believe will prove to be quite fruitful and beneficial for all of us.”