(Rivista Internazionale - December 1996: Charitable Activities of the French Association - 5/7)

Dakar. Senegal. Sick people assisted in the Order's Institute of Applied Leprology.

Pharmacists prepare the shipments according to the recipient's requests, bearing in mind local pathologies and the type of health institute which will use them (hospitals, clinics, etc.).
Five shipment centres send the sorted and parcelled medicines to the disadvantaged populations of 60 countries. These are mainly in Africa, through and under the control of our ambassadors or representatives, and in East Europe in liaison with the Order of Malta's representatives present in many countries.
In 1966, the Order of Malta's French Hospitaller Works will have sent almost 600 tonnes of medicines, that is 30 million boxes, and almost 900 tonnes of medical supplies, food products, clothing, etc. Two thousand volunteers and a hundred or so pharmacists work on this enormous chain of solidarity enabling assistance to be supplied to millions of disadvantaged people too poor to procure the medicines they need.

Health structures outside France
In other countries, the Order of Malta's French Hospitaller Works intervene on three different fronts: the management of big structures, hospitals or lepers' colonies, the moral and financial support of small structures such as clinics or children's homes and the shipment of medicines.
The Order of Malta's French Hospitaller Works are present in twenty foreign countries and send medicines to another fifty.
1. Major institutions:
The Hospitaller Works directly manage hospitals in four countries: Benin (Djougou) and Togo (Elavagnon) for general treatment, Palestine with the maternity department of the Holy Family in Bethlehem and Senegal with the Applied Leprology Institute of Dakar.
There is also the Rohan Chabot Centre, a clinic lepers' colony in Cameroon (Mokolo), the surgical ward of the national hospital of N'Dhamena (Chad) and the "Pavillon de Malte", a surgical ward for rehabilitating lepers in hospital no. 4 of Saigon.

2. Assistance:
• Leprosy - Our leprosy institutes are in Brazil (Macapa) where around 400 lepers are treated in an out-patients' surgery; in Cambodia where we work in co-operation with the Malteser Hilfsdienst Deutschland within CIOMAL, in charge of the national leprosy programme; in Cameroon (Mokolo) where we treat and rehabilitate around 400 lepers living in the village and with their families; in Guinea where we are responsible for the leprosy and tuberculosis campaign in 104 clinics; in Dakar (ILAD) where we treat 250 sick a year in hospital and over 3700 with general treatment; and finally in Ho Chi Minh-Ville (Vietnam) where we have restored over 1250 lepers to active life in five years, of which 350 in 1995.
• The children - Alongside its general treatment and care of lepers, the French Hospitaller Works have taken over two 'ENA' homes (destitute minors or street children and orphans) in Bujumbura in Burundi; 35 orphans whose parents have died of AIDS, and a home in Bukavu (Zaire). The Hospitaller Works directly manage two communities of mentally and physically disabled children with reinsertion schools in Cuenca (100 children: 12 in primary classes and 45 in pre-primary) and in Quito (35 children of which five in pre-primary).

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