Australia’s Critical Care Research Group has announced a new partnership with Rome’s Bambino Gesu Women’s and Children’s Hospital and Cairo’s Human Fraternity Foundation to help support mothers, babies and pregnant women in Egypt. Source: The Catholic Leader.
The partnership will see the building of a new hospital and the training of clinicians and will be the first healthcare institution to be funded by the Church in Egypt.
It will also see CCRG host Egyptian Research Fellows on two-year placements in Australia, a project fully-funded by The Holy See.
This type of tri-party agreement is believed to be a world-first.
CCRG founder and director John Fraser said one of the group’s key tenets was “to grow and develop the next generation of clinician scientists”.
“This new agreement with the Vatican and Human Fraternity Foundation will allow us to learn and grow together… with patients being the beneficiary of such a union,” Professor Fraser said.
Professor Fraser spent time with the world-renowned Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub at his hospital in Aswan, Egypt, in 2019.
Speaking on his experience in Aswan, Professor Fraser said “the possibility of being able to collaborate and assist even a little to this wonderful country is such an honour.”
Dr Matteo Di Nardo, paediatric anaesthesiologist and intensivist at the Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesu (Baby Jesus Paediatric Hospital), was involved in securing the Holy See’s support of the project.
After four years in the making, the agreement was signed in Kraków last week.
Dr Di Nardo offered his “heartfelt gratitude” to Professor Fraser and the CCRG.
“A special thanks also to Msgr Tomasz Trafny for hosting us in The John Paul II Sanctuary in Kraków and Dr Salman Abdulaziz for representing the Muslim faith at the signing,” Dr Di Nardo said.
The partnership secures a hospital in Cairo’s “New Administrative Capital” and will serve approximately five million people.
FULL STORY
Landmark partnership between Brisbane, Cairo and Rome to advance healthcare for women and children (By Michael Howard, The Catholic Leader)
