Just back from our mission in Ethiopia. Safe and sound despite the armed conflict between government forces and rebels, banditry.

We travelled over 1,000 km on the roads of southern Ethiopia, visiting the eight centres involved in GSI Italia’s project to combat malnutrition and promote income-generating activities. On this occasion, at the request of parliamentarians from Addis Ababa and health officials in the region, we visited the Boditti General Hospital on 12 November, which serves a catchment area of 500,000 people. There are about ten buildings scattered within a compound, serving as laboratories, delivery rooms, emergency rooms and hospital wards. No more than five dirty, rusty, unused beds, which had arrived in a container from some European donor, and foam mattresses on the floor on which sick people lie. In the emergency room, which is filthy beyond all reason, patients wait and are treated with the few resources available. There are four doctors working in the hospital, one of whom is a surgeon who operates without an anaesthetist, doing what he can to prevent death in an operating theatre without a surgical light or even the most basic surgical equipment.
The request made to GSI Italia: medicines, medical equipment, staff training, hospital beds. These requests were renewed the following day by Madame Mekdes, an Ethiopian parliamentarian, during a meeting with her at the Capuchin monastery in Addis Ababa.
Before returning to Italy, GSI commissioned the construction and delivery of an initial stock of 10 beds to the carpentry and joinery workshop in Soddo.
The association and those who are sensitive to the healthcare needs described above remain committed to supplying another 50 beds over the next 5 months.
We are confident that the meeting scheduled for 12 December at the hospital in Foligno will encourage medical and paramedical colleagues to offer their services on periodic specialist missions starting in 2026.
The spirit of solidarity that characterises the Umbrian healthcare community will certainly find reason to participate in the meeting organised soon at the Foligno Hospital, in aid of Boditti, Palestine and Eswatini.