“I brought her to me when she was ill. She was going to lose both kidneys in the West Bank so we brought her here to Schneider,” he said.
"As well as having kidney failure, she had problems in her bladder and her blood, which had been caused by the kidney problem. We still don’t know what originally triggered it.”
Noor was successfully operated on by Dr Sigal Eisner, head of the kidney transplant unit, and is now said to be doing well.
"It is very promising,” her father went on. “She is due to be discharged this week. She can stand and she can walk and she is eating everything. This was the dream for her.”
“She is finally able to start planning what she wants to study and what she wants to do as a job. She has started smiling and is feeling so much better.”
Eisner, who performed the transplant on Noor in two and a half hours, also saved a two-and-a-half-year-old, who needed a new kidney due to complications caused by a liver enzyme condition, on the same day.
Doctor Sigal Eisner, head of the kidney transplant unit at Clalit Schneider Children's Medical Centre (Image: Clalit Schneider Children's Medical Centre)[Missing Credit]
This child had been “living in the hospital and on dialysis six times a week” and, like Noor, he is now said to be doing well post-op.
“It is so nice to see,” Eisner told the JC. “They are very small because of growth difficulties due to their problems, but they grow so quickly when they are treated. They become normal children.”
For Eisner, it is important to compartmentalise the emotionally challenging situation during work so she can focus on the job at hand.
“It is so awfully sad [that a child has died], and then we see children in desperate need finally getting off the organ transplant waiting list.
“During surgery we can't afford to think about these things - but afterwards we do.”
The two other children who had transplants on April 14 were a toddler, who received a new heart, and a young child who received a new liver.
Doctor Yael Mozer-Glassberg, director of the paediatric liver transplantation unit at Clalit Schneider Children’s Medical Centre (Image: Clalit Schneider Children’s Medical Centre)[Missing Credit]
Doctor Yael Mozer-Glassberg, director of paediatric liver transplantation, hailed the significant hospital’s feat of performing four transplants in a single day.
She told the JC that Schneider normally only performs between 20 to 30 a year.
And, despite the demand being high, the supply of donor organs is low due to the fact that many in the Charedi community object to the practice.
Clalit Schneider Children's Medical Centre (Image: Schneider's Spokesperson)[Missing Credit]
Likewise, strict interpretations of Islam do not allow organ donation, but the JC learned that the donor who made these operations possible was from a Muslim family.
“According to Islam you are not really allowed to donate organs, but as long as there is a father who makes this decision, it is okay,” Daniel said.
“The girl’s father had so much courage to do this. It is something cannot describe in words.”
Daniel is now trying to track down the girl’s family to say thank you. “They gave my daughter her life back,” he added.
