More than 500 women followed in 68 children born thanks to the Prevention a friend for immigrant women in Milan project

“Here there are good people who help people in need”. This neat summary by one of the 500 women involved in the Prevention a friend for immigrant women in Milan project resonated in the Me and We - Women for Expo area of the Italian Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015 during the presentation of the preliminary results of the initiative promoted by Bracco Foundation with the Municipality of man and the Opera San Francesco per i Poveri.

Present at the meeting were about 40 institutional figures and field operators, who well represented the efficacious synergy created in Milan between those involved in health and immigration issues.

The results of the first year-and-a-half of activity, presented by Suor Anna Maria Villa, head of the Opera San Francesco Poliambulatorio, were positive and showed that 500 women had been involved (376 of them following a course with the health assistant), almost 1300 visits, screenings, morphological echographies and pap tests had been carried out and 68 children born.

A number topic discussed was that of diet in pregnancy, introduced by Irene Cetin, president of the Italian Society of Perinatal Medicine and Director of the Maternal and Infant Department of the Luigi Sacco Hospital, who spoke of dietary habits that were potentially dangerous for the health of the child and are now the subject of a study, sustained by Bracco Foundation, to collect information useful for defining education and support programs for immigrant women.

The meeting, opened with a welcome from Padre Maurizio Annoni, president of the Opera San Francesco,  ended with an address by Diana Bracco, Bracco Foundation president, who stress the virtuous combination of science, care, voluntary work and business, declaring that “this important project, made possible by partners such as Opera San Francesco and Centro Diagnostico Italiano, shows that teamwork is fundamental and innovative in a city that has been revitalised by Expo and must also be revitalised in the social aspect,” and by Piefrancesco Majorino, Councillor for Social Policies and Health Culture at the Municipality of Milan, who concluded saying that “the ability to make ourselves useful to people is something that must increasingly contaminate us, and this attention to teamwork and insistence on shared work is a change of course in the way the immigration issue is tackled.”