April 2002

"In God We Trust" Hi there, On March 26th. the 2001-2002 winter season came to an end. We sincerely honour those that in spite of the reports that were transmitted by the media, decided to attend our Center, and realized for themselves how far the Dead Sea is from all the unrest here in our beloved holy land. During this season, despite the small number of patients, some very interesting events took place. On December 2001, we hosted a delegation from Belgium and Germany, for a long weekend; including the President of the Belgium CF Association Dr. Jan Vanleevue and Mrs. Alix Legros, and the Chairman of the CF Association of Berlin Brandenburg Mr. Dirk Seifert. Our gusts had the opportunity to join the group of patients from Switzerland, to meet Prof. A. Tal and participate in all the activities that took place during that weekend, including a trip to Massada guided by Amos, our permanent guide, and our hiking exercise to Ein Bokek Wadi. Like in fairy tales, on a beautiful sunny blue sky morning of December 20th. 2001, Colin our the first patient from Indiana, USA, joined Soren from Germany, Benjamin, Niklaus, Martina, Reto, Sabina, Nicolas and other from Switzerland, and Marina, Mirit and other Israeli patients and became our very 1st. USA member. According to our tradition on the next morning we hung the American flag next to other flags from different patients' countries on the Information Board. We are proud to become an International and Intercontinental Center where patients from different countries meet together, exchanged experiences and having fun at the wonderful Dead Sea. We are looking forwards to seeing next season, patients from other countries as well. This coming June I will be participating in the 25th. European CF Congress in Genoa, Italy. At the conference we will be presenting the results of the researches which we performed. These researches are planned to be published in one of the famous medical publications. I would be happy to meet you during the Congress and share with you a further finding, which will be researched during the next season, regarding an important mineral fInd in large quantities at the Dead Sea area. This mineral causes, without doubt, a further improvement to the condition of CF patients and their day to day standard of life. Furthermore, we could take this opportunity to plan a visit for the members of the association you head, to our Center at the Dead Sea during the winter 2002-2003 season. For your convenience, the following are the periods and dates for the coming season: No Pseudomonas 29.10.2002 - 19.11.2002 Pseudomonas 19.11.2002 - 10.12.2002 10.12.2002 - 31.12.2002 31.12.2002 - 21.01.2003 21.01.2003 - 11.02.2003 11.02.2003 - 04.03.2003 Cepacia  04.03.2003 - 25.03.2003 For Registration Click Here Below you will find pictures of last season, as usual in our News Letters: Our Guests Dr. Jan Vanleevue, Mrs. Alix Legros from Belgium, and Mr. Dirk Seifert from Germany together with the group from Switzerland and Jardena our physiotherapist. In an International tennis-tabel game between Switzerland& Germany, Benjamin from Switzerland won the game. Let us hope and pray that peace will come to our region.

Benjamin Pinkas & the CF Center Staff

The CF Center 86930 Ein-Bokek Dead Sea, Tel/Fax 972-8-6520256 Main office 16 Shaar-Hagai St, 34554 Haifa, Tel/Fax 972-4-8243102