Yad Sarah is the largest national volunteer organization in Israel. Employing over 6,000 volunteers, with a salaried staff of 150, Yad Sarah serves over 350,000 clients each year. It is best known for its free loans of over 244,000 pieces of medical and rehabilitative home-care equipment annually, enabling sick, disabled, elderly and recuperating patients to live at home. This saves the country's economy an estimated $320 million in hospital fees and long-term care costs each year.

Kalman Jacob Mann was an Israeli physician specializing in pulmonology, and the eighth and longest-serving director general of the Hadassah Medical Organization. During his three decades at the helm of the Hadassah HMO, he was credited with the renovation of the hospital campus on Mount Scopus after the Six-Day War, and the construction of a new Hadassah medical center at Ein Kerem. He also sat on 14 different government committees, influencing Israeli health-care legislation. Following his retirement from Hadassah in 1981, Mann shepherded the development of the Yad Sarah medical equipment lending organization, serving as its chairman until his death in 1997.