Leading Surgeons Fly To Aid Boy In Accra

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29055, 18 November 1959, Page 12

Leading Surgeons Fly To Aid Boy In Accra

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

ACCRA, November 16. Five leading brain surgeons who flew to Accra at short notice from London, Paris, Tel Aviv, and an American naval base in Morocco waited in Accra tonight at the bedside of an Israeli boy who suffered critical head injuries in a week-end road crash.

The condition of the boy, 8-year-old Rami Katz, has shown some improvement in the last 12 hours.

The international specialist team said they would wait for 48 hours before deciding whether to perform a delicate brain operation:

The surgeons had been summoned through orders issued by Ghana’s Prime Minister (Dr. Kwame Nkrumah) in response to an appeal from the Israeli Ambassador (Mr Ehud Avriel) after Rami’s condition became rapidly worse.

Dr. Nkrumah ordered that everything possible be done to save Rami. Ghana’s High Commissioner in London was asked to

communicate with Dr. Harvey Jackson, a leading British brain specialist. Dr. Jackson, senior surgeon at the National Hospital, •London, and consulting neurological surgeon for the British Ministry of Pensions, left London for Accra yesterday. An amateur radio operator in Greenville, North Carolina, who overheard an emergency call on Saturday night from Accra to Israel for the services of a brain surgeon, sent out an SOS which was picked up in Israel. As a result two American surgeons at a base in Morocco were ordered by the United States Goverment to fly to Accra where they arrived last night. The others who flew to Accra in response to the appeal were Professor Askenasi from Israel and Dr. Michael Feld, one of France’s best-knoWn brain surgeons.

The accident happened last Saturday when the boy and his sister, Amira, were returning to Accra from Winneba Beach, 35 miles west of the capital, in the car of Mr Kaufman, an Israeli civil engineer and friend of their father.

Mr Kaufman’s wife, Dinah, was killed instantly and the engineer and . Amira were injured. The boy’s father was in another car just ahead.