Keywords
medical studies
academic missionary movement
tropical medicine
Buluba (Uganda)
leprosy in Africa
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Abstract
The article includes biography and data on professional and social activities of Dr. Wanda Maria Błeńska (1911-2014), a high-minded person fully dedicated to medical help and humanitarian aid for the people in Africa and other countries of the world. Dr. Wanda Błeńska studied medicine at the University of Poznań (1928-1934), being engaged at that time in the academic missionary circles serving among others as editor of Annales Missiologicae. She also attended the State Institute of Hygiene in Warsaw where she specialized in serology and microbiology. In forties she studied tropical medicine in Hamburg and Liverpool to fulfil her dreams to work as missionary doctor. In 1950 she arrived in Uganda (Africa) and in 1951 she became the medical director of leprosy centre in Buluba-Nyenga. She headed this institution for 32 years and thereafter, for a period of ten years, she trained there physicians, students and medical personnel, in addition to functioning as a medical consultant. Dr. Błeńska contributed much to development of the Buluba leprosy centre and to the health care system for lepers in Uganda and other countries of Africa due to founding a school teaching medical auxiliary personnel for leprosy stations dispersed in African countries, the school officially named Wanda Błeńska Training Center. After returning to Poznań in 1993 she continued, almost to end of her life, the welfare, educational, organizational and social work. She was cofounder of Redemptoris Missio foundation. Her achievements were awarded by plentiful honors, among others with medals by popes John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II, also by the presidents of Poland Lech Wałęsa and Bronisław Komorowski and with the title Doctor Honoris Causa of Academy of Medicine in Poznań.
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