Aryeh, PH Israel

My name is Aryeh Copperman, I live in Israel and run the PH Association. My main hobby is to help people! I am currently studying for a masters degree in Public Health at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, I have a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Information Systems. I am involved with the Israel Association for Pulmonary hypertension as well as other medical associations. I am married with 4 children and a few grandchildren

My wife got ill with PH in 2005. I found the association and saw a need for more efforts and support for patients with Pulmonary Hypertension. Patients did not get proper care, there wasn’t enough awareness and they were not represented in government or in the health ministries sufficiently. I felt the need to make an impact and improve this situation. I started actively getting involved where I could, during my wife’s 5th month of pregnancy she started to feel unwell. She had a severe shortness of breath and was unable to even walk short distances. We went to several doctors who didn’t find anything wrong. My mother who is the wife of a cardiologist heard about the shortness of breath and mentioned it to my father. He called us late at night and said we had to come to hospital in the morning. She went alone as I didnt think it was so serious and was then called into hospital when they finished her Echo testing and found that her hypertension was very very high 75 instead of the average of 20. Within 3 days we were forced to end the pregnancy – she was in ICU for a month and only after a year was she able to get around and drive.

Because of my personal experience of patient care, awareness and support that we felt was lacking I decided to become more involved and be an activist for PH in my country. We focus on working with the medical companies, support groups, events, conferences, awareness campaigns and getting the relevant medications covered. We are also very proud of the oxygen concentrator loan program which we have established