(ANS – Madrid) – For World Health Day on Sunday 7 April, the Salesian Mission Office in Madrid is launching the “Thinking of doing nothing? Campaign.

Millions of people around the world have no access to quality health care, and more than 2 million people cannot get hold of pharmaceuticals, another half a million women die during pregnancy or childbirth because of lack of appropriate help... and every three seconds a child dies from some preventable disease.

“We are concerned about children with malaria, patients with typhoid fever, pneumonia, undernourished children...”, says Grace Marie, a volunteer at the Don Bosco hospital in South Sudan.

“It is not customary to have health structures in all Salesian missions, but need a t times demands that we do have them”, says Fr Lucas Camino, the Salesian missionary who sees firsthand what Salesians are doing in their clinic at Lomé, Togo. It serves more than 400 people suffering from diabetes and hypertension, and hundreds of mothers and a further hundred orphans whoa re fed daily.

As in Lomé, Salesians have similar clinics in Mexico, Mali, Central Africa Republic, Ecuador... there are more than 200 Salesian works aimed at improving the health of communities, run by missionaries, and paying particular attention to prevention and promoting health amongst groups at risk.

Pablo Souto, responsible for communication at the Madrid Mission Office explains: “We would like to alert people to the need to take responsibility for what happens in some of the poorest areas in the world where access to health care is a right that few have available to them. We at the Madrid Mission Office believe that access to health care should be truly universal. Through our site - www.misionessalesianas.org – and social networks, whoever wants to can contribute so that health is more than a privilege”.

Other figures quoted by the Madrid Mission Office explain the need and urgency of immediate action:

• 11 million children under 5 die of easily curable diseases.
• 14 million people die each year from infectious diseases.
• 7 million people still suffer from Hanson's disease (leprosy).
• More than 33 million are affected by AIDS.
• 4,000 people suffer from diarrhoea because they do not have access to clean water every day.

Published 05/04/2013