Trauma surgeon Avraham Rivkind wins Israel Prize for lifetime achievement

Israel's Education Minister Yoav Kisch announced in late March 2026 that Professor Avraham (Avi) Rivkind, head of trauma and general surgery at the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem, would receive the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement and special contribution to society and the state. The prize was presented on 22 April 2026, at the close of Israel's 78th Independence Day celebrations.

The prize committee described Rivkind as one of the country's leading general surgeons and a pioneer of new approaches and tools for saving lives. It credited him with designing a complete trauma system that links care in the field with care in the hospital, and with training generations of doctors, medical students, medics and paramedics in trauma medicine. Hebrew University, whose medical faculty he graduated from in 1973, lists his approach to trauma treatment among the institution's 100 most significant contributions and says it has substantially reduced death rates across all levels of injury.

Rivkind, the only child of Holocaust survivors, trained in general surgery at Hadassah and later at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland, one of the birthplaces of modern trauma medicine. In 1992 he founded Israel's first dedicated trauma centre at Hadassah Ein Kerem. Over the following decades his unit treated thousands of critically injured patients, including many victims of terror attacks in Jerusalem as well as wounded soldiers.

His work has also reached far beyond Israel. Hadassah notes that he took part in treating victims of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, the 2002 terror attacks in Kenya, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Sri Lanka and the 2014 blizzard and avalanches in Nepal. Hospital leaders said his vision had transformed trauma care in Israel, a system now studied by medical teams from other countries.