Sheba (Schieber or Schiber), Chaim
SHEBA (Schieber or Schiber), CHAIM
SHEBA (Schieber or Schiber ), CHAIM (1908–1971), Israeli physician and medical educator. Born into a ḥasidic family in a small village in Bukovina, Sheba went to Palestine in 1933. He worked as a sick fund physician until 1936, and then joined the staff of the Beilinson Hospital in Petaḥ Tikvah. After service with the Royal Army Medical Corps in World War ii, he became chief medical officer of the *Haganah in 1947, and on the establishment of the state was appointed chief medical officer of the Israel Defense Forces. In 1951 Sheba became director-general of the Ministry of Health, but resigned two years later to take over the direction of Tel Ha-Shomer Hospital, Ramat-Gan, which under his guidance developed into one of the country's leading medical institutions. In addition to being head of this hospital's department of internal medicine he became, in 1965, an associate clinical professor at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem. In 1966 he was appointed a vice president of Tel Aviv University. Sheba did fieldwork in parasitology with Saul *Adler in the 1930s, and his many scientific publications cover a wide variety of subjects, ranging from amebiasis to population genetics, and from relapsing fever to hemolysis due to enzyme deficiencies. He was awarded the Israel Prize in 1968. After Sheba's death in 1971, the Tel Ha-Shomer Hospital was renamed after him.
[Shabbetai Ginton]