Kinshasa, 12 February, 2025 / 12:27 pm (ACI Africa).
On the annual World Day of the Sick marked on February 11, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, members of the Religious Institute of the Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB) have highlighted programs supporting health needs of youths and their respective families around the globe including Africa.
In a Tuesday, February 11 report on the occasion of the Church’s 33rd celebrations, the Director of Salesian Missions, the U.S. development arm of SDB, says that Salesians “offer more than 150 medical clinics and hospitals in mostly rural areas around the globe that serve a wide range of medical care needs of youth and their families.”
“Salesians ensure that poor youth and their families have access to critical health services. Through hospitals, dispensaries, and mobile medical clinics, Salesians are addressing the medical needs of those in often remote areas that have little access to care,” Fr. Michael Conway is quoted as saying.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the SDB report indicates that Salesians have supplied Afia Don Bosco Hospital in the country’s Catholic Archdiocese of Lubumbashi with a new generator to ensure uninterrupted electricity supply.
The hospital, which SDB member say runs 65 percent of the time on a generator, experiences frequent power outages, which impact its ability to provide continuous medical care to patients.