Department for External Church Relations
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Metropolitan Hilarion speaks on aid to children in Syria at the congress on Physical and Rehabilitational Medicine in Paediatrics: Traditions and Innovations
On March 21, 2019, the Second National Inter-disciplinary Congress with international participation took place in Moscow. It was devoted to the theme ‘Physical and Rehabilitational Medicine in Paediatrics: Traditions and Innovations.’
Assembled to the congress were over two thousand medical specialists, representatives of parents’ organizations, social workers, children’s psychologists, economists and state officials. The aim of the event was to exchange experience and develop a common concept of the rehabilitation of children and youth in today’s world.
Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate department for external church relations (DECR), spoke at the opening of the congress. In his welcoming speech, he expressed gratitude to Russian paediatricians for their work and informed the congress about the project for aid to children in the Middle East, which is being implemented, with a blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, together with the Poznanie and Linia zhizni Charities and the Research-Practice Children’ Psycho-neurology Center of the Moscow Healthcare Department.
‘We are working together under a program for rehabilitation of Syrian children injured in the course of the armed conflict. You are aware that a war has been going on in Syria for already a long time. Among the victims of this war are many children: some lost limbs in bomb explosions or tripped a mine, others were blinded, still others suffered from other mutilations. We are working together to help these children’, His Eminence said.
‘Some say: Why should we help someone else’s children?’ he remarked speaking about the charity project, ‘I think every one of you will agree that there are no someone else’s children’.
Ms. Maria Al-Betaar Shehadeh, a member of the Syrian Parliament, speaking at the opening of the congress, expressed gratitude to the Russian government, the Russian Church and personally to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, Metropolitan Hilarion and Ms T. Batysheva, director of the Children’s Psycho-Neurology Center.
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The project for aid to children affected by armed conflicts in the Middle East is a program which was launched in May 2018 and which is implemented, with the blessing of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches of Antioch and Russia, by governments and medical specialists in Russia and Syria as well as charities throughout the world. With the help of this program, injured children are brought to Moscow not only for prosthesis but also for a full course of rehabilitation. The program also includes trips of Russian medics to Syria for an exchange of experience and broadening cooperation, round-tables, international and inter-church conferences at the highest level.
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