Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service) - At a press conference yesterday held at Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital there was a presentation of projects launched by the Hospital in recent years projects involving doctors and missionaries with little means who work ‘miracles’.
BGCH president Prof Francesco Silvano said these people were “builders of justice as well as peace” because through works of charity they help restore justice among the poor.
In the past five years the hospital has assisted children in more forty different countries with articulated programmes of charity missions organising specialist examinations and surgery where necessary.
In 2005 BGCH programmes assisted children in Cambodia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Myanmar, Dominican Republic and Tanzania. In Tanzania at Hope Village a centre for children with AIDS in the new capital Dodoma, BGCH took over the organisation of laboratories, installed medical equipment and sent trained personnel to work in loco. Hope Village is an oasis of human and medical care for many unfortunate children in one of the world’s poorest countries.
BGCH teams of doctors, technicians and nurses examine, treat and operate thousands of children in areas of the world where people have neither electricity or clean water and where every day men, women and children are maimed or killed by leftover anti/personnel landmines. Areas devastated by war, famine and thirst, or simply areas where, if life is difficult for the healthy child for a sick child it is impossible. Places where minor malformations or diseases easily treated in developed countries often lead to marginalisation or death.
Not by chance the name given to this articulated BGCH foreign charity missions programme is " five continents ward ".
These humanitarian missions reach out to children distant areas while not forgetting those in need not so far from Italy. In fact BGCH runs programmes for children in Mediterranean countries ranging from Libya and Tunisia to Albania.
Lastly, BGCH has missions in places of emerging poverty, eastern European countries and former Soviet Union territories from Rumania to Poland, from Russia to Bulgaria, and Georgia. BGCH doctors also operate in east Asia and in Africa: China, Bangladesh, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Eritrea. (AP) (22/9/2005 Agenzia Fides; Righe:39; Parole:439)
