Latest news with #MaccabiHealthcareServices
Gulf Insider
3 days ago
- Health
- Gulf Insider
More Fetal Losses Than Expected After Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccination In Israel: Study
A higher-than-expected number of miscarriages and other forms of fetal loss were associated with COVID-19 vaccinations in Israel, a new study has revealed. Researchers found 13 fetal losses—four more than the nine expected—for every 100 pregnant women who received a COVID-19 vaccine during weeks eight to 13 in pregnancy, according to the study, which was published as a preprint on the medRxiv server. Most people in Israel, including pregnant women, received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Pfizer did not respond by publication time to a request for comment. The team behind the study includes Retsef Levi, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher who was recently named to the committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines, and Dr. Tracy Hoeg, who works for the Food and Drug Administration. The researchers analyzed electronic health records from Maccabi Healthcare Services, one of four organizations that provide health care to Israelis. They looked at 226,395 pregnancies that occurred between March 1, 2016, and Feb. 28, 2022. The primary analysis looked at fetal loss for pregnant women after dose one or dose three of a COVID-19 vaccine, with fetal loss including miscarriage, abortion, and stillbirth. The researchers came up with an expected number of fetal losses based on a model that drew from data before the COVID-19 pandemic, then compared the expected number of fetal losses with those that occurred from week eight of pregnancy onward. They identified 13,214 fetal losses after the COVID-19 pandemic started, compared with 12,846 fetal losses in the reference period, finding that women who received a COVID-19 vaccine during weeks eight to 13 in pregnancy experienced a higher-than-expected number of fetal losses. 'If you believe this result … every 100 women that you would vaccinate during weeks eight to 13, you are going to see close to four additional fetal losses,' Levi told The Epoch Times. The researchers cautioned that more information is required to say for sure that the vaccines cause fetal losses. They also noted that when they carried out the same analysis for pregnant women who received a COVID-19 vaccine during weeks 14 to 27, the number of fetal losses was lower than expected. An additional analysis of pregnant women who received an influenza vaccine from March 1, 2018, to Feb. 28, 2019, also found a lower-than-expected number of fetal losses. The researchers said those results could stem from what is known as healthy vaccine bias—the data could be skewed because people who receive vaccines are typically healthier than those who do not. Maccabi Healthcare Services did not return an inquiry by publication time. Dr. Yaakov Segal, head of obstetrics and gynecology medicine at the organization, is one of the paper's co-authors. Israel's Ministry of Health and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which encourages pregnant women to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in any trimester, did not respond to requests for comment by publication time. 'Generally, medical advice to pregnant women follows the precautionary principle and is based on sound and careful research,' Josh Guetzkow, researcher with Hebrew University of Jerusalem and another study co-author, told The Epoch Times via email. 'Our study shows just how irresponsible it was for our health authorities to abandon these core principles.' COVID-19 vaccination was recommended for pregnant women in Israel and the United States early in the COVID-19 pandemic, even though the clinical trials for the vaccines excluded pregnant women. Moderna's clinical trial for pregnant women was ultimately terminated, while Pfizer ended its trial early after enrolling just 175 women. The latter found slightly lower COVID-19 incidence among the vaccinated when compared with those who received a placebo. Some observational studies have determined that pregnant women benefit from COVID-19 vaccination. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently narrowed its COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and no longer advises COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy. The new paper was published as a preprint, without peer review. Levi said the paper had been rejected by two journals, and the authors decided that the implications were too important to continue to not release it to the public. Guetzkow said the researchers are going to keep trying to get the paper published by a journal.
Middle East Eye
19-05-2025
- Health
- Middle East Eye
Israeli doctor compared killing Palestinians in Gaza to 'eliminating cockroaches'
An Israeli doctor serving as an army reservist has compared killing people in Gaza to 'eliminating cockroaches' in a post on social media. Writing on X on Sunday, Sabo Amos, who works as a surgeon in Israel's public healthcare system, said he had volunteered to take part in 'eliminations' after his battalion had killed 'dozens of terrorists' the previous day. Amos said he had requested to take part in operations 'within the framework of preventative medicine', but said another doctor had suggested his involvement was a matter of 'public health'. 'On second thought, he's right. After all, we're talking about eliminating cockroaches and other loathsome insects,' Amos wrote in the now deleted post. Later on Sunday, he posted an image which he said showed Israeli soldiers participating in an afternoon Jewish prayer service in a mosque in northern Gaza. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters 'Every few minutes, machine gun fire or tank shells hit Gaza. Grind them,' he wrote. Amos previously called for Gaza to be 'erased' in a post on X in August 2024. 'There are no uninvolved people there,' he wrote. Amos works for Maccabi Healthcare Services, one of Israel's main public healthcare providers, which offers services to all Israeli nationals, including Palestinian citizens of Israel. According to Maccabi's website, he is based in Maalot Tarshiha, a mixed city in northern Israel with a large Palestinian population. MEE has contacted Maccabi Healthcare Services for comment. A Palestinian doctor working in the public healthcare system in Israel, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told MEE he was not surprised by Amos's comments. He recalled how some doctors in the hospital where he worked had celebrated when a hospital in Gaza had been bombed, and had called for Gaza to be erased, and for the people to be starved. 'I've reached a point in these hospitals where I've started to wonder what kind of view someone has of medicine that pushes them to think like that,' he said. 'It cannot be the perspective of a human being, a doctor, who has taken an oath." 'Occupation of medicine' He was concerned, he added, at the abuses that doctors and medical staff who had been called up by the army may have been involved in, citing the torture and mistreatment of Palestinians in Israeli detention. "I'm surrounded by criminals - either from a humanitarian standpoint or a medical one. It's a sort of occupation of medicine that forces us to erase our own identity and hide our feelings in these hospitals toward the people of Gaza.' Ghada Majadli, a researcher and policy analyst at the Al-Shabaka think tank, who focuses on Palestinian health and human rights, said Amos's posts revealed the growing militarisation of Israel's healthcare system. 'Doctors are moving between clinics and the battlefield, as if medical and military roles are interchangeable,' Majadli told MEE. 'When medical professionals adopt the language and tools of war, they fundamentally betray the ethical principles of medicine, which centre on care, neutrality, and the preservation of life.' She said Israel's healthcare system had channelled significant resources in support of the war in Gaza and had failed to oppose attacks on hospitals and the destruction of medical infrastructure, or the denial of food and aid which has pushed the population to the brink of starvation. Amos's posts were made as Palestinians across Gaza faced a renewed Israeli assault that killed at least 144 people on Sunday and has killed more than 50 already on Monday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israel will take 'full control' of Gaza, while his far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on Monday that Israel is 'destroying everything that is left' in Gaza. Smotrich said: 'We are conquering, cleansing, and remaining in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed.' Israel's attacks targeting hospitals and other healthcare infrastructure have been widely condemned by international organisations attempting to support medical care for Palestinians in Gaza where more than 52,000 people have been killed since the start of the war in October 2023. On Sunday, the Palestinian health ministry said that all hospitals in northern Gaza are now out of action and accused Israel of laying siege to the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia. Earlier this month, British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians said more than 1,400 healthcare workers had been killed in Gaza and accused Israel of waging a "war on healthcare". Amos's remarks were condemned on Monday by the Israeli Medical Association which said it was looking into a number of complaints. 'The Ethics Bureau strongly condemns calls for doctors to kill in the name of medicine and sees a need to emphasise that the doctor's role, in whatever setting he operates, is to save lives and cure patients,' it said in a statement.
