Press Release / Health and Fitness / Foundation Alberto Lajo, Institutional Excellence Prize

Foundation Alberto Lajo, Institutional Excellence Prize

The San Juan de Dios Hospital Order and the Heart of Jesus Medical Centre of Women have been awarded
In its institutional modality, the International Prizes of the International Confederation of Healthcare (CIS), recognizes projects on strategy, innovation, humanity and on the solution of problems of healthcare in the world.

The Alberto Lajo Foundation has been awarded for its dedication and service in the field of health and safety, for lending a hand in disadvantaged areas and people in exceptional necessity.

In its XVI award winning ceremony the prizes have been granted to San Juan de Dios Hospital Order and the Heart of Jesus Medical Centre of Women.

The prizes, which the International Confederation of Healthcare gives on a yearly basis, differentiate the activities which are of great importance for the society, for the investigation, for teaching, and healthcare. They have two modalities, the personal or professional and the institutional or corporative.

The prizes recognize the ideas and strategies in the application of improvement of healthcare by means of evaluation of real cases and the complexity of plans of help in healthcare, which generate a value and a benefit for society and for people.

Alberto Lajo Foundation is a private and non-profit institution which has a Christian philosophy whose main aim is to offer medical help and care of disadvantaged, ill people, wounded people, victims of natural disasters, wars and violence.

Sanitary assistance started on a personal basis in 1995, having as main aim the determined areas of Central and South America and, later, extending the assistance to Africa and Asia; developing plans and objectives of concrete help and staff cooperating with other organizations and foundations. Cooperations with other organizations and missions, originally voluntary, were the basis of the beginning of the creation of this foundation in 2014.

The foundation provides information, assistance to families and to certain people (food, medicine, surgical operations, psychological support, counsel) just like to those institutions, to ONG, to missions which needed cooperation and counsel in the field of health and safety. Throughout the years it has kept the aim to grant sanitary care for all the people who are in need without distinction of beliefs.

Exemplary Model of Assitance at Labour
During the award winning ceremony, the president of the International Confederation of Healthcare, appreciated the foundation, which was created by Dr. Alberto Lajo, as an exemplary model of assistance at labour, as an unselfish support and as a dedication towards vital and punctual objectives at global level. Dr. Lajo, as the president of the Foundation Alberto Lajo in his answer, gave warm thanks for the prize and made an emotional speech in front of the attending authorities, professionals and audience.

The second organization with which the Doctor’s foundation shared the prize is San Juan de Dios Hospital Order from Ecuador, which is a non-profit Christian organization; it is part of the church and whose philosophy is hospitality and the humanization of assistance. It was founded in Granada in 1593 by Juan Ciudad who established the first hospital dedicated to the care of poor and ill people, financed by donations. At the end of the XVI century more than 50 hospitable centres were established, mainly in Italy and in Spain. It expanded to the Spanish colonies in America and to Europe (at the end of the XVIII century it reckoned on 256 centres). In the XIX century it reached its maximum development in South America and in the XX century it expanded to Africa, Asia and Oceania.

The hospitable centres were the first in inaugurating palliative care in Yan-Ji, in China in 2004. At present the order attends 27 million people. In 1967, the Brothers of San Juan de Dios Hospital Order went to Ecuador to found in Quito a nursing home. All this was to solve the need to give more human and integral attention to psychiatric patients.

During the award winning ceremony a dinner was organized (as a conclusion of the congress) at Hotel Hilton in Cartagena de Indias in Colombia, where the experts of healthcare of different nations of America could make friends.