Laniado Hospital refusing to train unvaccinated frontline health workers
A group of ten nursing novitiates were recently given an ultimatum by Netanya’s Laniado Hospital that they must get injected with the COVID-19 shots in order to proceed with their clinicals.
The news has come as a disheartening shock to the nursing students, who have been studying for a year-and-a-half to become nurses in Israel.
"But now, as we stand about a month before entering the wards - the clinical experience, we are suddenly informed that anyone who is not vaccinated for corona does not enter the wards,” one nursing student told America’s Frontline News. “And they do not care if I recovered [from COVID], with or without antibodies, whether I’m pregnant...or any other reason. Just like that. And there is no one to talk to.”
“What can be done?” she asked. “Who can we turn to for help against the grief and dictatorship that is being forced on us?”
The students were told the hospital is mandating that every student who has recovered from COVID-19 get at least one dose, while those who have not recovered from COVID-19 must get at least three.
The hospital refuses to disclose who is behind the mandate.
But according to one nursing student, the decision may rest with Head Nurse Esty Shir.
The student told America’s Frontline News that she approached Director of Nursing School Ester Strauss to ask why she is being forced to get the injections when it is not required by Israel’s Health Ministry. Strauss directed her to Esty Shir.
“She said to me in these words, ‘I do what I want and I don’t need to answer to anybody’,” says the student.
The student then made calls to Israel’s other major hospitals to ask if they, too, were imposing vaccine mandates on nursing students, which they said they were not.
With nowhere to turn and no recourse, the student got the injections.
But the remaining vaccine-free holdouts are refusing to give in and established a legal fund to help them fight the vaccine mandate.
The hospital did not immediately respond to a request for comment from America's Frontline News.
