Person, care, dedication, solidarity. The four pillars of the Gemelli ecosystem

The Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci recalled the measures contained in the budget law to counteract the difficulty in recruiting personnel, especially for certain medical branches of public health, and to make it more attractive to young people. “I am thinking of the increase, from the 2025/2026 academic year, of 5% of the fixed part of the remuneration for all specialisations and 50% of the variable part for the specialisations that are currently less attractive. But also the possibility for doctors with experience in the emergency-urgency services to participate in competitions for recruitment in the National Healthcare Service.”

The Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, Antonio Gasbarrini, emphasised in his speech that “a crucial aspect of our work lies in our constant cooperation with the health institutions, in particular with the Lazio Region, our main client in the public health sector, and with the Ministry of Health, which sets the rules and creates the opportunities to guarantee fair and accessible national public healthcare.” The Dean of Medicine identified an original area in which to ensure the Faculty’s commitment to support regional and ministerial policies. “In addition to our role in the elective pathologies, in fact, we are developing with both institutions, regional and national, policies at the service of the crucial emergency/urgency network, that network that represents the backbone of health policies”, “fundamental to save lives, reduce complications and guarantee the integrated care of the patient, from the first intervention to rehabilitation.”

The Rector spoke of healthcare combined with the pillar of solidarity at the end of her speech, regarding the Rome campus’ contribution to the Africa Plan of Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. “The intention is to place the African continent at the heart of health, welfare, education, research and third mission projects. In a spirit of reciprocity with Africa, the University intends to become an educational pole with a threefold purpose: to train doctors in Africa, to offer second-generation African youth study opportunities, and to integrate the volunteer experiences of our students into their academic careers. To this end, agreements and alliances will be forged with universities and organisations operating there,” Professor Beccalli continued, “from Catholic ones to internationally recognised ones such as Unesco and FAO, and hopefully in close connection with initiatives such as the Mattei Plan for Africa. From this point of view, the Roman campus of Università Cattolica can make a decisive contribution, because its activities already make the link between education, growth and solidarity visible. We have a total of 123 projects active at the University in 40 countries, 14 of which with the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery alone.”

The two prolusions and the concluding testimony were devoted to the Africa theme.

“I am not an academic, I certainly cannot give ‘lessons’, I can try to share what I live in the field every day, as a doctor, as a priest and as the Director of Doctors with Africa Cuamm, an organisation that for 75 years has been working in Africa, in the poorest countries, to take care of the health of the most fragile,” began the Director Don Dante Carraro. “Our name encapsulates the style that guides our intervention: not ‘for’ but ‘with’ Africa. We walk side by side with the local populations, within the health system trying to be its leaven, intervening in partnership with the local authorities and starting from real needs. We do not drop interventions from above, but build together responses that can be sustainable and can guarantee the future. Above all, we care about mothers and children, fragile among the fragile, especially at the moment of birth and in the first months of life. Lastly, we believe that a fundamental lever for change is investment in training, of young Italians and also Africans, which is why we collaborate with 39 Italian universities and with many research partners around the world, so that we can give solidity to our intervention, because we are convinced that a medicine for the poor should not be a poor medicine.”

Carlo Torti, Professor of Infectious Diseases at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, speaking on Global Infectious Diseases: Shared Challenges between Industrialised Countries and Africa in the Fight for Universal Health, highlighted a “worrying paradox: while, for the most part, deaths from infectious diseases occur in poorer areas, in industrialised countries we are seeing an increase in cases of vaccination-preventable diseases caused by inadequate vaccination coverage.” And he concluded that “science must evolve from a logic of publication (‘publish or perish’) to a focus on innovation (‘innovate or perish’), recognising that we live in an interconnected world and that our actions must reflect a collective responsibility to combat global diseases, such as infectious diseases, for the benefit of universal health.”

Francesca Schiavello, a young specialist in Internal Medicine, who talked about her experience volunteering with Cuamm in Tanzania, said that “working in Africa does not mean practising ‘second-hand’ medicine at all.” Of course, “the means available are very limited. But, working in a low-resource environment is a great school of life for us doctors. In a context where there is a lack of laboratory tests, X-rays, CT scans, one is necessarily pushed to compensate with the eyes, with the hands, with the ears, with listening, with semeiotics.” A lesson in life but also in healthcare with a human face.

The inauguration ceremony was preceded by a Holy Mass in the central church of the building, presided over by Cardinal Baldassare Reina, Vicar of His Holiness for the Diocese of Rome, and concelebrated by Bishop Claudio Giuliodori, the Athenaeum’s general ecclesiastical assistant. “Before being a place, Università Cattolica is a way of being,” said the Cardinal. “A style that is based on four essential elements: the strength of relationships; the ability to grasp the essential with the search for truth; attention to the person; the commitment to curb evil.”