One day in 2009 Guy Kurgan, a South African immigrant to Israel, had an epiphany. As a shop tender at one of the tiny country’s eight licensed “Tikkun Olam” medical marijuana farms, he saw a daily stream of grateful patients who nonetheless faced a thorny conundrum: although they needed the rapid relief of inhaled cannabis, their fragile health contraindicated the harsh rigors of smoking.

Guy couldn’t get this image of suffering out of his head, so along with his brother Roi Kurgan, he began educating himself. Controlled studies had recently shown that vaporizers like the Volcano could produce medical vapors which were up to 95% pure, providing the immediate relief patients needed without potentially harmful smoke byproducts. Although the brothers heard a long litany of ‘no’ and filled out more bureaucratic red tape than they could have imagined, the compassionate duo persisted until they finally managed to work out a deal between the Israeli Ministry of Health and the Storz & Bickel company, makers of the Volcano vaporizer, to provide a special model, the “Volcano Medic,” to needy patients. Within a few years, the Volcano Medic could be found at Israeli children’s hospitals and oncology wards across the country, with all initial costs shared between Storz & Bickel and the philanthropic Kurgans. To this day, the “Volcano Medic” is the only vaporizer approved as a medical device for the administration of cannabis, and the work of the Kurgan brothers recently drew the recognition of Dr. Sanjay Gupta, whose CNN documentary “Weed” became a watershed event in the shifting of US public opinion on medical marijuana.

But the Volcano isn’t cheap, so the success of the program quickly transformed into yet another challenge: how to pay for the medical devices Israeli patients began more and more to demand. Fortunately for the patients, Guy and Roi have to date secured subsidies with 3 out of 4 Israeli HMOs, the Israeli Defense Ministry, the Holocaust Survivors Group, the Traffic Accident Survivors Group and many other civic organizations which have helped defray the cost of an urgent program. To date, approximately 400 Volcano Medics have been sold through the program, and thousands more have been rented, at a cost of about $100 US per month. Patients who need assistance vaporizing can medicate under the supervision of a nurse, who provides private balloons and easy instructions.

While Israel’s medical cannabis research program still faces significant challenges, the success of the Volcano Medic program has demonstrated what a handful of compassionate and entrepreneurial individuals can accomplish with persistence. Because private industry, public bureaucracy, insurance companies, generous foundations and concerned citizens were able to come together to work out solutions, sensitive patients now have access to advanced and affordable care.

Mimi Peleg is Director of Large Scale Cannabis Training for MECHKAR, Abarbanel Hospital, Israel. Peleg recently co-authored “The Ladder” with Galia Halfi – a self-help guide to inner peace (beshalom.org). You can contact Peleg at mimi@mcdc.co.il.