Eni Foundation celebrates its 10th anniversary

In Myanmar Eni Foundation launched a project to support the population in the Magway region, a mainly agricultural area with little or no rain for at least four months of the year. The project included, in agreement with the local Ministries of Energy, Health and Agriculture, improving access to water, especially clean water, where there are no water sources and the sanitization of existing systems.

Read the exclusive interview with the Italian Ambassador to Myanmar, Giorgio Aliberti

In the early years of its activities, the Foundation focused its efforts on children’s healthcare, specifically on the major endemic diseases and pathologies that affect children and compromise their growth and full development. In this spirit, projects and interventions have also been conducted to deal with a number of major health problems, supporting the efforts of the international community within the framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to reduce the incidence of diseases such as malaria, TB and HIV. In addition, also in the area of the protection of children, important vaccination programmes against major diseases have been carried out.

One of the challenges that the Eni Foundation is currently facing is in Myanmar, in the Magway region, where a group of rural villages where there is a shortage of water and electricity, and where, the only crops are peanuts and sesame. The aim is to combat malnutrition, to quickly create wells that provide drinking water, to improve farming and  to provide medical support to women and children.

The Eni Foundation always works alongside local governments and institutional and private partners (ONG) in order to maximise the impact of its efforts and resources available on site. The Foundation’s doctors, scientists, technicians and professionals are ready to intervene in the interest of the local people, wherever they are, to make a difference to their lives.

Over the years, the Eni Foundation has carried out a large number of projects, meeting people and discussing the need to improve living conditions with targeted interventions in areas such as proper nutrition, food security, the improvement of agricultural techniques, as well as educational and cultural activities, implementing national and regional health plans.

Among the most important initiatives has been the restructuring of the Jomoro District in Ghana, the location of the Half Hassini hospital, which provides inpatient and emergency services as well as obstetric and neonatal assistance. In the district of Palma in Mozambique, meanwhile, alongside local authorities, initiatives have been put in place to strengthen emergency services in order to reduce infant, child and maternal mortality. Here, as in many of the Eni Foundation’s projects, the intervention was achieved through the training of medical, nursing, technical and administrative staff.

Another very significant initiative of a health and cultural character was carried out through theatre. In the north of Mozambique, the "Il Teatro fa bene” project, a number of actors, in a particular format based on one hand on the dramatization of health and nutrition-related information, and, on the other, with practical demonstrations on the use of simple technologies to facilitate everyday life, aimed to convey to the local population, particularly mothers and children, a greater awareness about good hygiene, sanitation and food-preparation practices in a more effective way than other forms of communication that are often absent from the villages.

Eni Foundation activities have also focused on Kilamba Kiaxi, in Angola, where important results have been achieved in terms of the improvement of health services and the fight against malnutrition, while in the Republic of Congo, in the regions of Kouilou, Niari and Cuvette, health care facilities for children have been improved considerably and a massive vaccination programme carried out.