The Italian Football Federation has chosen to donate part of the proceeds from the Italy- North Macedonia match to the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital to support the reception activities of Ukrainian children and families fleeing the war.
In fact, there are about 200 Ukrainian patients already taken care of by the doctors of Bambino Gesù, of which more than 40 are currently hospitalized with serious illnesses or war wounds. Five of them are hospitalized in the Pediatric Palliative Care Center just opened by the Hospital and which the FIGC has helped to support with its own donation. More patients are on the way. The expenses for the reception of these children and their families are borne by the Bambino Gesù Onlus Foundation.
“The Federation – says the president Gabriele Gravina – does not want to let go of its commitment to support the extraordinary efforts that the Bambino Gesù Hospital is making to welcome sick and injured children who are fleeing from Ukraine with their brothers and sisters and their parented. We feel that we can all do something to respond with solidarity to a dramatic situation, which represents unacceptable violence especially against these children”.
“The support of the FIGC – affirms the president Mariella Enoc – honours us and comforts us on the possibility of achieving our objectives of welcoming these families who find themselves living a shocking and dramatic experience, which combines the pain of war with that of the disease. We are deeply grateful to the national team, to all the players, to coach Mancini and to president Gravina, who in recent years have always been close to our most fragile patients, showing moral qualities to be proud of”.
The collaboration between the FIGC and the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital now goes back a long way. The entire national team met the children hospitalized in the Gianicolo headquarters for the first time in 2019, on the eve of the match against Greece for qualifying for the European Championship, and a second time last December, bringing the trophy won at Wembley to the Hospital. In between, many concrete support initiatives for research and assistance and many education and awareness initiatives, such as the donation of a machine to analyze the presence of DNA mutations in diagnostic samples purchased thanks to a contribution of 50 thousand from the FIGC euro, the economic support for the creation fo the Pediatric Palliative Care Center in Palidoro, the campaign on the use of masks among children and adolescents as a tool to contrast the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic or, just in recent days, the donation, thanks to Bauli, officiale licensee of the Italian Football Federation, of 750 Easter eggs to children and young people hospitalized in the four hospital locations: Gianicolo in Rome, Palidoro, Santa Marinella and Passoscuro.
