Israeli Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar Siman Tov has informed Health Minister Haim Katz that he will step down from his role in the coming weeks, the ministry announced on Tuesday.
Bar Siman Tov is leaving after about nine years in the post, over two separate terms: from July 2015 to 2020, and again since January 2023. The ministry said he will oversee an orderly handover.
The official led Israel’s public health system through the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the War of Redemption sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, including caring for thousands of war casualties and receiving returning hostages, the ministry said.
Bar Siman Tov is expected to join Columbia University in New York as a research fellow in the coming months, where he will study how health systems cope with national trauma, according to the ministry.
Katz in the statement praised Bar Siman Tov’s “significant contribution” to the Jewish state’s health system. He said the director-general led the ministry “with professionalism during especially complex and challenging periods.”
Bar Siman Tov said he was leaving “knowing that the Israeli health system is strong, professional and prepared for any challenge.”
