Mr. Sammy Ofer

The Rambam Health Care Campus Award for the year 2010 is granted to the philanthropist, dear friend of the Rambam family, Mr. Sammy Ofer, native of the city of Haifa and the Bat-Galim neighborhood. Both the vision and the deed, two principles required to harvest the fruits of life, have merged in the person of Sammy Ofer. And indeed, from early on Mr. Ofer distinguished himself through the implementation of his vision and the promotion of his business activities, in addition to his unflagging contribution to the country about to be established and through his drafting, at first to the Royal British Navy, and later, following the establishment of the State of Israel, through his activities as one of the founders of the Israeli Navy. Mr. Ofer devoted himself from there on to the shipping business, his enterprise soon becoming one of the largest worldwide in his field of activity.
At the same time and with humbleness, Mr. Ofer became one of the most significant philanthropists in Israel in general and in the fields of medicine and health in particular.
He established the Medicines Foundation which funds medications not covered by the Health Basket provided by the state, thus meeting the needs of numerous intestinal cancer and breast cancer patients, who are not able to cover the related expenses for medications. Furthermore, Mr. Ofer established the Heart Center at the Tel Aviv Medical Center, but his unique relationship with the Rambam Hospital, situated close to his childhood neighborhood in Haifa, found another notable expression in the course of the Second Lebanon War in his unique donation both for the upgrading of the main building of the hospital, the Sammy Ofer tower, and for the establishment of a protected, underground hospital aimed at operating during emergency periods for the sake of all Haifa inhabitants.

Mr. Ofer´s contributions to the Israeli society at large span over numerous areas, such as the Inter-Disciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, numerous museums, the new Haifa soccer stadium, with many more to come.

On the basis of all the aforementioned Mr. Sammy Ofer was found eligible for the 2010 Rambam Award.​