One of Israel's leading fertility experts and a former chief of gynaecology at one of its largest public hospitals will lose his medical licence for two and a half years after admitting that he removed hundreds of ova from private patients at the Herzliya Medical Centre without permission and without registering the procedures in their medical records.

Zion Ben-Raphael, formerly a department head of the Rabin Medical Centre-Beilinson Campus, will be punished following a ruling by retired Jerusalem District Court president Judge Vardi Zeiler, who is responsible for deciding cases after medical personnel appear …