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Israel compensates for ringworm treatment

The compensation results from a law passed by the Knesset (parliament) after a group of patients who had had ringworm showed evidence of a direct link between the radiation and their tumours. Money, in the form of one off grants or monthly pensions, depending on the severity of the disability, will be distributed on a case by case basis. Immigrants who underwent such radiation treatment may file applications for compensation in district health offices. Only those who arrived between January 1946 and December 1960, received radiation treatment, and later developed cancer may apply.

A committee of experts will decide on each case and set disability ratings. People found to have between 40% and 74% disability will receive one rate, while those with over 75% disability will receive a higher rate. Monthly allowances may also be awarded. Those with less disability may also receive assistance, as may survivors of victims.

Most of the victims arrived in Israel as children during the years of mass immigration before the founding of the state or during the next decade. Nearly all were immigrants from north Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and were given radiation treatment by government order only a few days after their arrival.

Aviv Yosef, head of the Association of Ringworm Radiation Victims, said that he was given radiation treatment after arriving at an immigration camp near Haifa. He was 16 and had come from Syria. "The nurse shaved our heads and poured hot wax on to remove all the hairs from their roots. Then we were sent for radiation. I myself never had ringworm," he said. "Nobody explained why they were doing this to us, and no one asked our permission." Yosef stopped working in 1977 because he developed a brain tumour

When cancer appeared in a number of families as early as the 1960s they noted their common past as patients with ringworm and demanded an investigation. Initial epidemiological studies were not conclusive, Yosef said, but the government has recently accepted responsibility.

Yosef said that about 20 000 immigrant children with ringworm (and a number who had been misdiagnosed) were irradiated; some were even treated in their native countries, but under Israeli auspices, before they emigrated.

Professor Baruch Modan, an epidemiologist at Sheba Hospital, was one of those who investigated the matter in the 1960s. "Radiation was used to treat ringworm in many countries from the US to Norway, Portugal, and Morocco. We have records that it was used way back in 1917 at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem."

Professor Modan and his colleagues compared matched groups of patients with ringworm who were irradiated with control groups who were not; those who were irradiated showed on average twice the incidence of cancer. Most of the cancers affected the brain, head, and neck.

Cancers of the brain were four to eight times more likely to appear in those who were given radiation treatment.--JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH, medical correspondent, Jerusalem Post

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