Mission Germana Erba in Benin

HOSPITAL SAINT PADRE PIO in N'DALI. We have been carrying out the MissionGermanaErbainBenin annually since 2014, thanks to the collaboration with Gruppo Missionario of Merano, who built the Hospital Saint Padre Pio in N'Dali in the north of the country in 2012.

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The hospital was planned by the diocese of N’Dali for the local population since there was no hospital at the time. It is open to everybody no matter one’s religion or ethnic group, and has offered an intercultural and interreligious context over the years we always had the opportunity to experience.

The activities in the hospital are carried out in two operating rooms and wards of pediatrics, surgery, obstetrics, general medicine, a laboratory, a pharmacy, radiology.

The missions of Cute Project in the hospital every year are a big help both for patients and local medical staff, who are acquiring new specific skills. We are trying to set up, inside the hospital, a permanent Centre for the treatment of burns and scars dedicated to Germana Erba, a cultural trainer in Turin who created in her city the first school of performing arts, which has taken her name.

Germana Erba was convinced that the only way to really help any context to become autonomous is training. The patients, mainly children, come from the surroundings, from the department of Borgou but many patients come also from the capital Cotonou, since it is quite difficult to have this kind of treatment all over the country. Over the years we have treated patients coming from Nigeria, Togo and Burkina Faso, which are neighbouring countries, because our activity is well known now and doctors send there their patients. This situation states once again the real need of this kind of surgery as well as the difficulty of getting specific care in their own country.

Our project is to set up a specific operating room for reconstructive plastic surgery, which needs its own equipment, in order to give the opportunity to the local medical staff already trained over the years, to treat patients with burns and malformations which need plastic surgery (keloids, tumors, labiopalatoschisis, hand malformations).

Since 2014, during our missions in Benin we have treated 519 patients with reconstructive plastic surgery when Cute Project team stayed for an average time of 2 weeks each year.

In 2019 we examined over 150 patients and treated 74 with surgery. We noticed that the number of patients to be treated is much bigger so the project will be a real help for the local population once the Centre will be open all year round, offering appropriate reconstructive plastic surgery for burns, traumas and their outcomes. During our missions we have trained Dr. Gerard Sorou Agboton, from Benin, who is presently completing his studies in Cotonou but intends to work at hospital Saint Padre Pio in N’dali.

During the missions and after Dr. Arianne Todane collaborated closely with us. She is from Benin, lives in N’Dali and works at the hospital Saint Padre Pio in pediatrics. In 2019 we could give her financial support in order to be able to follow the patients treated during the annual mission of Cute Project and select and follow the patients for the following missions. All the medical staff have received specific training as for medications, pre, intra and post surgery care.