Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) - Tomorrow 30 September Pope Benedict XVI will visit Bambino Gesu Children’s Hospital on the Giancolo Hill in Rome. The Pope will visit children in various wards including emergency, observation, neurotraumatology and cardiology and address the hospital authorities and staff
Other papal visits have included: John Paul II in 1979 and 1982, Paul VI in 1968, Pope John XXIII in December 1958 only two months after his election.
According to the programme issued by the Prefecture of the Papal Household, the Pope will leave the Vatican at 10.45am and arrive at the hospital around 11am. He will visit some of the wards, stop to pray in the chapel with a group of children and then address the Council of Administration, other authorities, doctors, nurses and other staff in the Hospital Conference Hall.
The Pope will be informed of the Hospital’s extension plans, and most significant investments achieved and planned for the future.
Bambino Gesu Hospital was donated to the Holy See in 1924. It has become a point of international reference for medical care for infants and children and on the front of bio-medical research. It avails itself of the collaboration of 2,100 doctors, researchers, nurses, hospital technicians and volunteers involved in more than forty specialist areas ranging from heart surgery to transplants, neuroscience to plastic surgery, endocrinology to genetics, intensive care to clinical engineering.
In recent years the Hospital has intervened in favour of the Third World and in former Soviet territories with humanitarian missions led by Bambino Gesù personnel. The Hospital has just marked the 4th anniversary of its Portal (www.ospedalebambinogesu.it) launched on 25 September 2001 and now an important point of reference for information and service with regard to health of babies and children.
One of ten European centres with the best quality service online listed by the European Commission, and the first in the field of healthcare, the Hospital is an innovative multilingual reality which puts the Internet at the service of doctors and parents with: video-consultations, on line booking for examinations (30,000 so far), formation of health and medical personnel at a distance, a baby portal for children a scientific book section with over 100 international magazines and paediatric news continually updated. (AP) (29/9/2005 Agenzia Fides; Righe:39; Parole:439)
