Little Iván was born with a severe heart condition. He was 15 months old when he received a new heart. The images you see on screen are from 1986, a historic year for Italy.
It was the first time in the country that a heart transplant was performed on a child, and the fourth time in the entire world.
But… where did it take place? Although everyone knows it as the “Pope’s Hospital,” it’s also called “The Hospital of Difficult Cases.” This year, the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital celebrates 40 years as an Institute of Research and Healthcare.
A date marked on the calendar of a center that has saved thousands of children's lives. The hospital, which belongs to the Holy See, has used the anniversary to inaugurate its new Gene Therapy Laboratory, which works directly on the DNA of young patients.
The event was attended by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who emphasized that the mission of the “Pope’s Hospital” is not to be paralyzed by difficulties but to face them with hope.
PIETRO PAROLIN
Secretary of State of the Holy See
There are children and families who have found new hope; there are researchers and doctors who have discovered new solutions; there are teams that have transformed scientific results into concrete treatment paths. It’s important that the Bambino Gesù be a hospital that always says ‘yes’ to research, that doesn’t stop in the face of difficulties or the questions raised by rare diseases, but faces them with courage and tenacity, always seeking an answer.
The scientific advances achieved at this hospital have marked a before and after in the care of children: in the last 10 years, Bambino Gesù has discovered more than 100 new genes linked to various diseases.
The hospital has performed more than 1,200 organ transplants and more than 2,500 bone marrow transplants — the vast majority over the past 15 years.
A center that, as the Vatican Secretary of State pointed out, never says no to a patient:
PIETRO PAROLIN
Secretary of State of the Holy See
A place that never refuses care. Always finds a way to welcome those who knock on its door — even from distant corners of the world, especially those marked by poverty or conflict; a place that doesn’t measure its success only by clinical or scientific results, but by its ability to stay close to patients, to listen to them, and to accompany them.
|
Forty years of research, science, healthcare, and healing at the Bambino Gesù Hospital, all to ensure that its patients can live their lives, not as sick people, but as children.
