Professor Siegal Sadetzki, the head of Israel’s Public Health Services in the Health Ministry, announced on Tuesday her plans to resign from her position.
In a lengthy Facebook post, Sadetzki shared a letter she penned to Health Ministry Director-General Hezi Levy on Monday, in which she declared her plans to step down, and explained her reasons for resigning.
"Yesterday morning I informed you of my request to leave my position as Head of Public Health Services at the Ministry of Health and the central role I took in managing the prevention of the spread and containment of the coronavirus epidemic in Israel.”
"After many years of senior public service, in which I invested all my abilities for the State of Israel and its citizens, the last few months have come that have drastically changed life in Israel and throughout the world. For the past six months I have been busy every day, hour, nights, weekends and holidays with the coronavirus crisis.”
“In fact, I do almost nothing besides it. My skills and thoughts are directed to the study of the subject, to thinking about ways of coping with the challenge, to raising proposals to deal with the epidemic in the realities of global uncertainty about it, to detailed work to implement the decisions made at various levels, in order to save lives.”
"I acknowledge the privilege I had to play a significant role at the forefront of the fight against the spread of the Corona epidemic, at critical moments for the State of Israel and its citizens."
“In the last few weeks, Israel has been heading in a dangerous direction. The current data and the map of infections and forecasts of the immediate future are more reliable than a thousand witnesses.”
“But Israel, which succeeded in dealing with the first wave has abandoned the [policies] followed by other countries, and in so doing has strayed from the policies it had [previously] implemented by opening up social activity very quickly.”
“But after this path didn’t work, with the number of sick people increasing, we need to fix this, and fast.”
"Unfortunately, for the last several weeks the handling of the epidemic has lost direction. Despite systematic and regular warnings in the various systems, and discussions in various forums, we watch with frustration the hourglass of opportunity running out.”
“Against this backdrop, I have come to the conclusion that in the newly created conditions in which my professional opinion is not accepted - I can no longer help effectively to curb the spread of the virus."