Recently Hadassah commemorated the annual international no smoking day with a variety of activities and events in the hospital. These included providing information from the Israel Cancer Association and the COPD clinic about the risks of smoking; reinforcement of Hadassah policy of non smoking within and close to its facilities with the help of inspectors from the Municipality of Jerusalem and volunteers; distributing flyers to patients and guests; and awarding those who stopped smoking recently with prizes.
Hadassah Medical Organization has been active in since 1989 in order to decrease the smoking rate and remove the cigarette's smell from the hospital. At first, special smoking sections were de\signated in the two Hadassah hospitals, no smoking signs were placed, and a smoking inspector was assigned in each hospital. In addition, the department of the employee's health prepared detailed plan for employee's education and withdrawal of smoking. In the past ten years the activity is managed by Micky Stern, who also lead support groups, offered individual withdrawal programs (with nicotine substitutes) and also accompanied those who enlisted on the program for a long period of time.
In the past year, with HMO joining the European initiative of "health improving hospitals", the "none smoking hospital" policy was implemented by a committee, which leads the activity in the hospitals.. Dr. Milca Donchin, the coordinator of the "improving health and durability hospital" initiative is the head of the committee, Mrs. Varda Schwartz, Mr. Isaschar Zarfati, and Dr. Ido Weinberg sit on the committee with her.. The team was supported by Dr. Yuval Weiss, head of the "improving health and durability hospital" committee.
The international health day events are part of a yearly plan initiated by the committee for preventing and decreasing the level of smoking on a personal as well as institutional level.