Virginia Project - Andrea Bocelli Foundation

Beneficiaries

30.000

30.000 patients/year and department staff

Objectives

Implement The Department of Neonatology with tools and specialized expertise by providing new equipment and training for the Haitian personnel.
Empowerment of the local Community to stimulate lasting improvements in the quality of life on the island.

Project detail

THE PARTNER

Francesca Rava Foundation helps children in difficult conditions in Italy and worldwide, through long distance adoptions, projects, activities to raise awareness about children’s rights, voluntary and represents in Italy the humanitarian international organization N.P.H. – Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (our little brothers) founded in 1954 by Father W. B. Wasson, who since then has saved thousands of orphans and abandoned children in his houses and hospitals in Latin America.

Saint Damien Pediatric Hospital, Tabarre: The Saint Damien Hospital is a center of excellence, the biggest pediatric hospital in the Caribbean which can provide assistance to 80,000 children a year, 4,500 mothers and their babies.
The hospital employs 400 Haitians helped by volunteers coming from hospitals all around the world.

THE PROJECT

The Foundation has decided to support for one year (June 2012 – June 2013) the Department of neonatology of the Saint Damien Pediatric Hospital of Tabarre, dealing with the professional development of the internal staff totally Haitian, in the intention of creating a specialized staff, gradually making the department able of being self-sustainable.

In addition to all this the Foundation has contributed to create the emergency room of the neonatology ward.

In neonatology are treated premature babies (who are often born with a weight less than 1500 gr.) or having neonatal diseases, often born from malnourished mothers. The department has 32 beds in intensive and sub intensive therapy and is affiliated with the Hospital Bambin Gesu in Rome.

ABF ACTIONS

Support of the neonatology unit training.
Purchasing the equipment for the new operating room.

IL CONTESTO

Ad Haiti oltre 520 donne ogni 100.000 parti muoiono per complicazioni durante la gravidanza o il parto, un tasso di mortalità materno di 20 volte superiore a quello dei paesi industrializzati che è anche conseguente causa di un’altra drammatica realtà: ad Haiti il 16% della popolazione minorenne è orfana.
Ogni anno, 74 bambini ogni 1.000 nati vivi, non raggiungono il primo anno di vita.
Su 10.000 donne gravide approssimativamente il 4% sono sieropositive e trasmettono il virus al bambino. Sono moltissimi i bambini che nascono con malformazioni o disabilità legate a parti mal gestiti, infezioni e patologie neonatali non diagnosticate.

Le mamme sono giovanissime, appena raggiungono l’età fertile (11/12 anni) molte sperimentano la prima gravidanza. Non si sottopongono a controlli né hanno i mezzi e la possibilità di modificare le loro abitudini alimentari. La malnutrizione e l’assenza di integratori, come l’acido folico, incidono drammaticamente sulle condizioni e sulla crescita del feto.
Normalmente partoriscono nelle loro baracche, in assoluta mancanza di igiene e di assistenza adeguata nel caso di complicazioni, sia per la mamma che per il bambino.

L’Ospedale St. Damien con la sua neonatologia, è situato nel cuore dell’isola di Haiti e grazie anche al reparto di neonatologia, opera per diminuire l’elevato tasso di mortalità infantile dell’isola.

Fonte: sito NPH

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