More than 3,500 children are hospitalised every year at Shaare Zedek and a further 8,000 are treated in the children's emergency unit. Many thousands of others visit the day hospital and outpatient clinics.

Although the medical care and emotional support Shaare Zedek provides for young patients are first-class, the hospital is struggling with out-of-date facilities, originally built almost 30 years ago.

Changes in medicine and changes in the needs of patients, as well as a three-fold increase in the number of children treated, means that the design and size of many departments are now seriously outmoded. Rooms are too small and lack windows. Isolation rooms have no bathrooms. There are no facilities for parents. The paediatric neurology department, for example, is suffering from a serious lack of appropriate space for all the patients that attend for treatment from locations throughout the country.

As the current paediatric department is fully utilised all day, every day, completely updating and refurbishing this area is not an option. Shaare Zedek is therefore building a seperate Children's Hospital in keeping with today's needs and the future health requirements of the children of Jerusalem and Israel.

With that goal in mind, Shaare Zedek is now preparing a major project to consolidate, expand and rebuild its paediatric departments into a separate Children's Hospital. This new building will be linked to the main hospital but will also have its own entrance and direct ambulance access to the paediatric emergency department.

As the hospital receives no government funding for new equipment or development, Jerusalem's Children's Hospital can only be built with the generous support of Shaare Zedek's friends from around the world.