Synod Fathers receive first aid kits

(October 22, 2009) Participants in the Synod of Bishops for Africa will return to their home countries not only with new pastoral plans, but also with first aid kits to guard their health. The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care collaborated with the Taiwanese embassy to the Holy See to give this gift to the 275 synodal fathers, many of them from African countries. The kits were handed to the prelates by Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, during a break from the assembly's working sessions. Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care, and Larry Yu-yuan Wang, ambassador of Taiwan, presented a kit to Benedict XVI and to Vatican Secretary of §State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. The easily portable medical kit contains, among other things, instruments to measure blood pressure and heart rate. The council said the kit would be of help on the spot to bishops in their missions, often carried out in conditions of great difficulty and in poor areas, where health structures are lacking." It is a sign of solidarity and communion with these populations, including the most remote, the council added.