As part of his working visit to Israel, Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski visited on Wednesday the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem to meet with its management, the government’s press service said.

The Hadassah Medical Center is one of the most advanced medical institutions in terms of research and application of state-of-the-art methods. With an annual budget of $500,000,000, the Hadassah Center is also considered a leader in medical research in the region.

The visit, stated the press release, aims at establishing cooperation over exchange of medical staff and treatment of patients and examining opportunities for other forms of enhanced cooperation. To that end, a memorandum of cooperation was signed with the Hadassah Medical Center.

At a meeting with the Hadassah management, PM Gruevski said his government in the sphere of public health was interested in exchanging experiences and sharing modern medical technologies and knowledge.

“With today’s signing of the memorandum, several areas are regulated, namely Macedonian doctors to be trained at the center for treatment of diseases and making of diagnoses and Israeli doctors to be sent to Macedonia so as to train our doctors,” PM Gruevski said adding the document also regulated ways for patients suffering from certain diseases for which there was no expertise in Macedonia to be sent to the center for treatment.

Praising the efforts made by the Macedonian government to enable exchange of experiences between the countries’ healthcare systems, the Hadassah management said it was open for various types of cooperation.

The Hadassah Medical Center is a leading medical institution not only in Israel, but also in the world when it comes to medical research and care for patients, said doctor Yoram Weiss.

“We are proud to be able to cooperate with Macedonia and open opportunities to accommodate patients and train medical staff in order to share our researches with Macedonian doctors,” stated Weiss, who serves medical director of Hadassah Ein Kerem.