Bambino Gesù, for two years caring for young Ukrainian patients fleeing from war
By Salvatore Cernuzio
The first one arrived at the Palidoro headquarters on March 1, 2022. Not even a week had passed since the first bomb fell on Kyiv that the Bambino Gesù Hospital found itself having to pick up the pieces of a war that soon revealed its brutality. Starting with that child, who arrived in Italy by makeshift means to reach relatives and was accompanied to Palidoro by doctors from L'Aquila, there have been over 2,500 Ukrainian minors welcomed, assisted, and treated within its ancient walls, owned by the Holy See for a hundred years.
Two years of hospitalizations, surgeries, and specialized treatments
Two years of war, 730 days of visits, day hospital stays, surgeries, emergencies, hospitalizations in Neurosurgery or Cardiology, or even cutting-edge treatments such as Car-T cell therapy capable of sending the disease into remission. "The maximum of possible science" of which a 12-year-old Ukrainian, suffering from dermatomyositis, was among the first patients in Italy to benefit. Two years dealing with wounds, trauma, Covid-19, surgeries on small bodies mutilated by the Russian offensive.
All treatments that became difficult if not impossible to receive in the "tormented" country, where the population is forced to choose between food and medicine. Bambino Gesù immediately responded to the call launched by the European ERN Networks to offer diagnostic and therapeutic assistance to children with serious rare diseases even remotely. In the hospital, there is and will always be a place for Ukrainian children affected by rare and ultra-rare conditions reported gradually by the European network.
Pope's visit in March 2022
As of March 19, 2022, there were 50 children that the Hospital had taken care of since the beginning of the war. Not a random date, but the day when the Pope had decided to celebrate "Father's Day" by becoming a father and grandfather himself to all the patients of the attacked country without parents, because they were at the front or in heaven.
Pope Francis went in the afternoon of that day to the headquarters on the Gianicolo, accompanied by the then president Mariella Enoc, and greeted twelve Ukrainian children who had fled from the war: 6 oncological patients, 2 neurological, 4 with war wounds. For them, blessings, gifts, caresses like the one - immortalized in a moving frame - to the girl with her head completely bandaged. The Pope's visit was a way to restore the smile that the war had stolen.
Letter from the Ukrainian first lady
Rehabilitation is not only physical but also emotional and psychological, an integral part of the mission of Bambino Gesù. This was also written by the Ukrainian first lady, Olena Zelenska, in a letter to President Enoc in which she recommended assistance not only healthcare and not only for children but also for their mothers and grandmothers: "It is very difficult to recover a child from an illness, and it is even more difficult to do so during a war. I dream that these heroic women start smiling again! I am sure that your attention could make it happen," wrote the wife of President Zelensky.
Mother Irene's song
Some of these mothers and grandmothers have regained their smile. Irene, for example, a singer and piano teacher who worked with children in kindergarten in Ukraine but had to leave everything to take care of her son Gregory away from the bombs. She felt so safe at Bambino Gesù, so welcomed and supported, that one day in April she wanted to hold a small concert in the hospital courtyard with traditional Ukrainian songs. A hymn to hope for her people, a tribute to doctors and nurses.
Heart opened
"Close to those who suffer, always" is the motto not declared but realized in concreteness by the staff of Bambino Gesù. This work was also appreciated by the delegation of the Panucraino Council of Churches during the January 2023 visit. The representatives of the major confessions in Ukraine were moved to see what had been done for their compatriots. After the visit, Bishop Marcos (Hrachya Hovhannisyan) of the Ukrainian Diocese of the Apostolic Armenian Church, head of the delegation, commented: "You have not only opened the doors of the Hospital but also the heart."
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