Country Ambassadors

Ronen Ben-Ami, Head of Division of Infectious Diseases Unit, Medical Director, National Centre for Medical Mycology, Tel Aviv Medical Centre, Israel. email: On request
How you have helped GAFFI so far? Estimating the burden of fungal related illness in Israel published in IMAJ vol 17:374,2015.
Personal comment on the major needs in Israel which GAFFI should be addressing: Establishing surveillance networks for invasive fungal diseases. In particular, our recent review points to lack of national level surveillance data about invasive aspergillosis, candidiasis, cryptococcosis, and P. jirovecii.
Antifungal drug availability: flucytosine is available in very limited supply. Supply of amphotericin B lipid formulation is frequently interrupted.
Therapeutic drug level monitoring: currently available, as a bioassay, for voriconazole only at a single center. High precision methods such as LC/MS for voriconazole and flucytosine are needed.
Links to key fungal/global health institutions in Israel: Israeli Society for Infectious Disease (ISID) Chairman: Nathan Keller. Israeli Society for Immuncompromised Host. Chairman: Dan Engelhard. Israel Society for Medical Mycology (ISMM), https://sites.google.com/site/ismedmycol/homeIsraeli Medical Association (IMA) http://www.ima.org.il/