Honorary degree in Medicine to Sister Julia Aguiar

The honorary degree in Medicine to be conferred on Oct. 6, 2009, by the University Federico II on Sister Julia Aguiar honors the extraordinary work done over the past 30 years by this religious in Bénin, West Africa.

Born 59 years ago in Spain to a farming family, she entered the Franciscan Sisters of the Mother of the Divine Shepherd Convent at 15 and made her profession of faith at 19. Eager to go on a mission to an African country, she prepared herself diligently and obtained diplomas as a nurse, midwife and refined her skills by attending courses in tropical medicine and surgery.

In 1979 she arrived in Bénin where she actively collaborated with Camillian Father Stenou to activate the Dogbo Hospital, one of the poorest and most abandoned areas of the country.

Among the terrible pathologies, she identifies a very serious form of mycobacteriosis very similar to leprosy (so-called Buruli Ulcer), which mainly affects the youngest, and quickly matures an exceptional competence that will lead her to create the Gbemontin Center, a facility of excellence today that treats more than 10000 sick people and recruits more than 400 new cases per year. She teaches diagnosis and therapeutic techniques to her staff and develops treatment schemes now adopted everywhere in Bénin.

From many parts of Africa the most severe cases are referred to her. To her credit, today all twelve provinces in the country have Treatment Centers for the disease. Intense is her collaboration with Professor Portaels of Antwerp with whom she has published fundamental scientific papers in journals of relevant impact.

The graduation ceremony will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 6, at 11 a.m. in theAula Magna "Gaetano Salvatore" of the Faculty of Medicine in Via Pansini, 5, Naples.

Rector Guido Trombetti and Giovanni Persico, dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the Federico II University, will introduce the ceremony, while the laudatio academica is by Enrico Di Salvo, director of C.I.R.B., the Interuniversity Center for Bioethics Research. Professor Portaels will bring her testimony .

The ceremony will be available to stream online at.
www.dol.unina.it:8445/Mediateca/Annuncio/user_wmv.jsp?idannuncio=2650