‘Supporting the global reach of the ‘Pope’s Hospital’
The Bambino Gesu is the largest sub-speciality children’s hospital in Europe as well as a world-renowned research centre.
The Galileo Foundation supports the Bambino Gesu Hospital in Rome. Founded in 1869, it is often referred to as ‘the Pope’s hospital’ because of the special pontifical status it has held since 1924.
The Bambino Gesu is the largest sub-speciality children’s hospital in Europe as well as a world-renowned research centre. It endeavours to support the reception of children in extreme medical need and their families regardless of cost from areas of war-torn conflict around the world. In 2019 the hospital received such 39 humanitarian cases: children suffering from serious illnesses, such as tumors, rare and ultra-rare diseases or wounded by weapons of war.
Each of these children has a hard story to tell, like the girl from Syria, torn by a bomb, to which the surgeons of the Bambino Gesù are recreating the face, or the 4 month old baby from Ecuador, suffering from a rare disease that brought him to Rome for a possible cure. Many of these children are untreatable in their own countries, but are in dire need of urgent (and often expensive) medical treatment.
The mission of the Bambino Gesu is deeply rooted in the right of access for every child to the best medical care, regardless of race, language or religion.Thanks to the help of a network of associations, foundations, and hotels, the Hospital manages to offer free accommodation to approximately 4,500 families, for a total of almost 100,000 nights per year.
In the city of Rome itself, the Bambino Gesu ministers to the city’s poorer neighbourhoods and parishes through it’s ‘mobile care unit’.
The Galileo Foundation is proud to support the hospital’s vital international outreach work, helping to send the doctors and nurses from the Bambino Gesu to carry out their mission in over 11 countries throughout the world, including the Middle East, Africa, India and Cambodia. It is a mission close to the heart of Pope Francis.
To find out more about the Bambino Gesu Hospital, please visit www.fondazionebambinogesu.it.
