The Italian Ministry of Health Ferruccio Fazio visits the NIHMP
The Italian Minister of Health Ferruccio Fazio, visited the National Institute for Health, Migration and Poverty (NIHMP) - Ancient San Gallicano Hospital on 16 November 2010. It was the occasion to participate in the award of the medal that the President of the Italian Republic decided to grant to the NIHMP, “for its thirty-year commitment to solidarity”. The Minister focused on the role of the Institute that provides an answer to the need for high-level assistance of migrants and a solution to the problems deriving from the phenomenon.
The prize and the visit of the Minister of Health at the NIHMP mean an important acknowledgment of the scientific, clinical, research and training activity that the Institute carries on since the Eighties with self-denial and effectiveness. This is a testimony of the results obtained in the protection of the weakest population groups, in the prevention and control of infectious and epidemiological diseases found in the groups at risk of social exclusion.
The Minister also underlined the hard work carried out every year by the NIHMP for more than 20,000 people acceding to the outpatient department of the Institute, particularly for specific diseases affecting migrants and women, who are protagonists today in the demographic - migrant women have a higher fertility rate than Italian women - and economic growth.
On behalf of all the staff of the Institute, the NIHMP Director General, Prof. Aldo Morrone, offered to the Minister some gifts from Ethiopia, including a handmade Ethiopian icon. These gifts symbolically represent the clinical, training and scientific research work carried on by the NIHMP in Ethiopia and the recent International Congress “Dermatological Care for all “Awarness and ResponsAbility”, held in Addis Ababa and Mekelle from 9 to 12 November.
