Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Mekellè (Agenzia Fides) - "The privatization of water is already a tragedy for Italy, imagine if we talk about Africa or Ethiopia, where there is a lack of drinking water.” These were the words of Professor Aldo Morrone, Director General of the NIHMP (National Institute for Health, Migration and Poverty) who is about to leave for Ethiopia with a group of specialists to hold a Congress on “community diseases for forgotten peoples", talking about the nearly 10-year-old territorial Mekellè Hospital, in Ethiopia. He recalled how many people, especially children die of diarrhea in infancy. In Ethiopia it is contagious and you can die from malaria, tuberculosis, leshamaniosi, filariasis. They are diseases that particularly affect poor farmers who can not be cured in this country where there is only one private health system. The Hospital has become, over time, a place where people who are receiving care from afar - even from Eritrea, a country at war with Ethiopia for liability due to foreign interference. At the Mekellè center, there is care without distinction and without asking for money. Between 2005 and 2009 more than 40,000 people have come to the clinic, while 2,000 have been hospitalized. There is much to be done, such as the activation of a water well to be able to save people and crops. This is why, at a press conference at the San Gallicano of Rome, the association launched the proposal "to adopt a well in Ethiopia," to help not only the individual but a village or community, in addition to a proposed Day to Fight Against Diarrhea. This disease causes 2 million children's deaths every year (500 per day), and yet to save them, it would be enough to have that small bit of salt, sugar and drinking water that Ethiopia does not have. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 24/11/2009)
