The story of Fondazione Ambrosoli seen through the eyes of those who today carry forward its projects and activities in Uganda.
The story of Fondazione Dr. Ambrosoli Memorial Hospital is bound up with a legacy and the firm determination of those who received it to carry it forward. With dedication, professionalism and passion. I am referring to the spiritual and material legacy left by my uncle, Father Giuseppe Ambrosoli, a surgeon and Comboni missionary declared "venerable" by Pope Francis on 17 December 2016.
This extraordinary story begins in 1956 when, as a young doctor and priest, Father Giuseppe arrived in a remote corner of savanna in northern Uganda, called upon to support a Comboni maternity dispensary that was in need of a doctor.
His vision, inspired by the Comboni ideal of "saving Africa with Africa", his surgical and entrepreneurial ability, enriched by an extraordinary spirit of charity and service, have left behind today a 271-bed hospital and a school of excellence that trains qualified midwives — and, first and foremost, independent and emancipated young women. Women who, with these values, are not only saving the lives of mothers and newborns but are changing their country.
Father Giuseppe, after 32 years of African life amid civil wars and bloody regimes, died on 27 March 1987, at the height of the civil war ravaging northern Uganda, following the forced evacuation of the hospital. Before dying he expressed the wish to remain among "his people", and today he rests in Kalongo beside the hospital he created, which for 60 years has continued to carry out its work without respite, with very limited resources but with great professionalism and humanity.
Dr. Ambrosoli Memorial Hospital is today the only healthcare facility in a district of 230,000 people, though it in fact serves a much wider and extremely poor area of around 500,000 people. Each year it provides qualified healthcare to more than 50,000 people, 70 per cent of whom are women and children under five years of age. The hospital currently has five wards covering general surgery, maternity and gynaecology, paediatrics, general medicine and tuberculosis isolation. It is equipped with an outpatient clinic, a laboratory for analysis and radiology, and a surgical block. It also hosts a pre- and post-natal clinic, a paediatric clinic for vaccinations and growth monitoring, clinics dedicated to specific conditions in psychiatry and tuberculosis, and an HIV/Aids and hepatitis B clinic.
St. Mary Midwifery School, which since its founding has qualified 1,312 midwives, represents a concrete and sustainable response to the problem of maternity and childbirth, which to this day accounts for 360 maternal deaths per 100,000 births. A Ugandan centre of excellence in specialist medical training, it is recognised by the Ugandan Ministry of Health as the best midwifery school in the country.
Fondazione Ambrosoli, which has taken on the material and human legacy left by Father Giuseppe, has been providing financial support to the hospital since 1998 and accompanying it on its gradual path towards independence. Through intensive fundraising activity, by financing current operating needs (primarily medicines, medical supplies and staff salaries), it guarantees qualified medical services and care every day, in one of the most remote and challenging areas of Uganda — a country that ranks 164th out of 187 in the global human development index — reaffirming the missionary vocation of "helping the last and most vulnerable" that Father Giuseppe Ambrosoli championed during his lifetime.
Our role does not end with financial support alone, vital as it is: our primary task remains the training of local staff and education towards independence, in keeping with the original vision of Father Comboni, realised in Uganda by Father Giuseppe.
"Saving Africa with Africa" means, today as in the past, bringing medical and managerial expertise to Kalongo, providing financial support for the professional training of future doctors, midwives and laboratory technicians, and accompanying the entire institution on its journey towards independence and sustainability.