Shas Minister of Health Uriel Busso took office about a week after the outbreak of the war. In his first interview since taking office, the minister spoke about the challenges of the health system during the war, which he said brought Israel to its worst mental health crisis ever.
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According to Busso, he heard about his appointment as minister of health in place of Moshe Arbel five days after the massacre, when Shas leader Aryeh Deri called him and told him that the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah (the councils of elders governing Shas) had decided to appoint him. The appointment was made on Sunday about a week after the massacre, after he had been chairman of the health committee in the Knesset for about a year.
Since the outbreak of the war, the hospitals have treated approximately 6,000 people who were injured in the Hamas attack in the surrounding area, and the extensive rocket fire that reached almost every area in Israel.
"The health system was the first to come to its senses on the first terrible day of the war," the newly minted minister told Israel Hayom. According to Busso, "In all the drills they did in the hospitals until the outbreak of the war, the worst estimates talked about a scenario of 150-200 wounded arriving at the emergency room at once. In practice, on that horrific Saturday, 700 wounded arrived at the Soroka hospital in one day, a number that kept growing. All this was carried out when many of the medical and nursing staff members had family members or friends who were murdered, kidnapped, or injured in the war. I get chills when I talk about it."
Busso (50), married and father of six, lives in Bnei Brak. In addition to his yeshiva studies, he enlisted and served in the IDF as a lieutenant. Busso managed educational institutions and served as deputy mayor of Petach Tikva before being elected to the Knesset.
Since his appointment as minister of health, Busso has made many tours of the hospitals and hotels where tens of thousands of massacre survivors and evacuees from towns near Gaza and Lebanon are staying. Busso said that he saw the enormous dedication of the workers of the health system in the hospitals and the HMOs, and witnessed, as mentioned, the terrible testimonies of the wounded and of the members of the medical staff who treated the wounded, and that some of them also had serious injuries to their own family members.
Video: IDF troops raid Gaza Strip overnight Wednesday / Credit: IDF Spokesperson Unit
One of the critical issues in the health system in Israel is the readiness and ability of the hospitals to treat hundreds of seriously injured people at once when fewer than half of the hospital wards and operating rooms in Israel are fortified against missiles. According to Minister Busso, "We are prepared to evacuate hospitals in the north to the center of the country if necessary and are preparing for the difficult scenarios that exist in the security system for the continuation of the war. We are now working on the rapid protection of some of the wards that are not yet protected. The total cost of fully protecting all the hospitals in the country is approx. 4 billion shekels".
According to the minister, the COVID epidemic taught the health system to quickly move from routine to emergency, "and the medical teams applied this experience in an exceptional way immediately after the beginning of the terrorist attack – treating thousands of wounded and preparing for the expansion of the war. In the fight against COVID, the health system in Israel demonstrated extraordinary abilities and was praised throughout the world, and this experience has now helped to deal with an amount of wounded that was not foreseen even in the most extreme scenarios that existed in the Israeli health system."
"We are all traumatized now"
Busso presents the issue of mental health and mental trauma as the most difficult problems in the war. This, in particular when the mental health system in Israel has been dried up, starved, and trampled for many years, leads to deplorable conditions of hospitalization and treatment in the psychiatric hospitals, and long lines of months and years for essential mental health treatments in the health funds.
"The mental health crisis in the war is the biggest and most serious mental health event in the country's history," says Busso. "Mental crises do not only afflict those who were in the communities around Gaza and their families but also many Israeli citizens who did not experience the horrors firsthand. We are all in a certain state of anxiety, we are all traumatized now. For example, a woman living in Beit Shemesh approached me in Bnei Brak who looked very frightened and asked to speak with me. She told me that she is not only afraid of the missiles but also of the air raid sirens themselves, and this is a woman who is in a mental crisis just because of the sirens, there are many like her."
According to Busso, the Ministry of Health is planning a long series of actions and initiatives to try to deal with the issue of mental health. "The Ministry of Health intends to proactively try to locate, for the first time, those who need mental help and support. There is also a plan by the Mental Health Division to employ thousands of therapists with a bachelor's degree in psychology and mental health to work as 'psychological mentors', who will respond to the health insurance funds." He says the Ministry of Health plans to provide hundreds of new rehabilitation beds nationwide.
"I know the system"
Regarding the claims that his wartime appointment to a position that requires adjustment time could damage the health system, Busso says: "I studied the health system when I was head of the health committee in the Knesset and I got to know the whole world of concepts. Otherwise, a situation is certainly possible in the discussion with the director general of the Ministry of Health, after 10 minutes the concepts discussed will be in Chinese for those who do not know and understand the field.
"At this time of the war, it was right to have a full-time health minister (the previous minister, Moshe Arbel, was at the same time the minister of the interior, RR) even though the previous minister did an excellent job. Now I see how much work there is in the Ministry of Health so that if there were 30 hours in a day there would be work for all those hours."
A severe budget deficit
During the interview, the minister emphasized that the successful functioning of the hospitals and health insurance funds in the war was due to the severe chronic budget deficit in the health system. According to Busso, a budget of about 20 billion shekels ($5 billion) is needed to match the governmental-public budgeting in Israel with that accepted in Western countries.
Busso refused to say that such an addition would be his demand from the government after the war, but he says that "after the war, the state's view of the health system must go up a notch. I am not prepared to remain in a situation where an Israeli citizen waits 3-4 months for an MRI scan, it is a matter of life and death. Shortening the queues will be my top priority after the war, and even more so after everyone understands that health cannot be separated from security."
