The medical-health sector is a woman. Yet very few female figures still reach managerial roles today. In the world, in fact, women represent 70% of medical health personnel, but only cover 25% of leadership positions. On the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Sciencewhich occurs on February 11, the Operation Smile Italia Ets Foundation – engaged in providing care and health care to people with faces malformations in low and medium income countries – he wants to stir and enhance the strategic role of women in the medical field through the program Women in medicine (Women in medicine), who offers training courses and tutoring opportunities for women to become professionals from low and medium income countries in advanced medical specialties, overcoming the barriers that hinder their professional career possibilities.
The program was launched for the first time in 2020 in Oujda, in the north-east of Morocco and saw on that occasion the participation of 95 professionals in the medical-health and voluntary sector of Operation Smile from 23 countries, each with different specialist skills. The initiative was then successfully replicated in Peru, Malawi, Philippines, Egypt and will continue in 2025 with 4 surgical training initiatives.
Over 5 million patients need care for labiopalatoschisi in the countries in which we operate and 5 billion people in the world do not have access to safe surgical interventions. “To fill this gap, the role of women is crucial,” he underlines Marcella Bianco, General director of the Operation Smile Italia Ets Foundation, “In Operation Smile we are aware that it is essential to continue our commitment to the equity of access to health and gender equality. And to be able to obtain full and fair participation of women in the health sector It is necessary to remove the socio -cultural obstacles that brake their access to medicine. The limited number of women’s models and leaders, as well as work opportunitiesof mentorship and social pressures represent an obstacle to participation and advancement of career. Our goal is to encourage them and support them concretely in overcoming these barriers ».
The Operation Smile Italia Ets Foundation – which since 1982 has edited more than 415 thousand people in the world – not only raises funds, but It also provides the Milan Cura Center, the only Operation Smile Training Hub in Europe. In January the Center hosted a women’s multidisciplinary team of three specialists from Honduras. For more information: www.operationsmile.it
(In the top: training during the Women in Medicine program)
