Professor Elhanan Bar-On, the director of the Center for Disaster Medicine & Humanitarian Response at Sheba Medical Center, has won the Yigal Alon Prize for pioneering excellence.
As a Lt. Colonel in the IDF Medical Corps Reserves, Prof. Bar-On participated in numerous IDF humanitarian aid missions. He served as senior orthopedic surgeon and head of the Orthopedic Dept. in IDF field hospitals following earthquakes in India in 2001, in Haiti in 2010, in Nepal in 2015, and following Typhoon Yolanda which struck the Philippines in 2013.
He has also participated in missions with various governmental and non-governmental organizations: in Turkey following the 1999 earthquake; in India following the 2004 tsunami; and in Haiti as part of a team that established a rehab center in Port au Prince.
Prof. Bar-On has been involved in training medical teams in countries across the globe, including India, China, Nepal, Tanzania, Mozambique, Albania, Kosovo, Morocco, and more.
In January 2020, Prof. Bar-On was one of the first to identify the need to prepare for an outbreak of the coronavirus in Israel. He instigated and planned construction of the first dedicated isolation unit in the country for coronavirus patients.