Please note these upcoming events for the Knights Hospitallers. For a complete list, see the Calendar page.

• Apr - May San Francisco Location calendar (PDF)
• Apr - May Phoenix Location calendar (PDF)

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Myanmar: Malteser International's medicines reach Yango Children and sick people urgently need assistance

“The situation in Labutta is disastrous. Within the city itself, there are around 100,000 internally displaced persons living in 58  camps. The people are really lacking everything,” Malteser International staff members that have been providing assistance in the Irrawaddy Delta since the weekend report. “Within the first hours after the opening of our emergency clinic in Labutta, we treated around 250 patients. The people mostly suffer from diarrhoea, skin diseases and burns due to cooking outdoor on the open fire.” Another big problem is the provision of children and babies. “As a reaction to the horrible events, many of the breastfeeding women don’t have milk for their babies. This endangers first of all the youngest ones who therefore urgently need help.”

To assist the survivors, Malteser International sent three so-called “Emergency Health Kits” to Myanmar. “Our relief supplies were on the plane of the German Technical Relief Organisation that landed in Yangon last night,” Roland Hansen, Head of the Asia Desk of Malteser International, says. “Already tomorrow, our staff members on the ground can bring the medicines and further relief supplies with which we can help 30,000 people for three months, to Labutta in the Irrawaddy Delta.” There, they will make up the supply for the emergency health station as well as the two mobile medical teams of Malteser International in Labutta. Staff members will also distribute further relief goods in the three districts of Yangon where the organisation has been providing assistance since right after the Cyclone.

“The example of the successful cargo plane with relief supplies shows that the financial donations we receive really reach the survivors in form of concrete help,” Hansen points out. “Our very well trained local emergency experts have free access to the disaster regions.” They treat patients, take care of the provision of drinking water, the construction of latrines and help building emergency shelters. “To be able to assist more people, we urgently need further donations.”

Already yesterday, Malteser International sent a second cargo with medicines, dressing material, plastic covers, cookware, feeding bottles, milk powder as well as water pumps, pipes and tools for the supply of safe drinking water – together with further staff (a doctor, a nurse and a water engineer) to Labutta.

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Fra' Matthew Festing, 58, an Englishman, became the 79th Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, elected March 11 by the Council Complete of State (the Order’s electoral body).

In accepting the role, the new Grand Master swore his Oath before the Cardinal Patronus of the Order, Cardinal Pio Laghi, and the Council Complete of State. He succeeds Fra’ Andrew Bertie, 78th Grand Master (1988-2008), who died on February 7.

The new Grand Master affirms his resolve to continue the great work carried out by his predecessor. Fra’ Matthew comes with a wide range of experience in Order affairs. He has been the Grand Prior of England since the Priory’s re-establishment in 1993, restored after an abeyance of 450 years. In this capacity, he has led missions of humanitarian aid to Kosovo, Serbia and Croatia after the recent disturbances in those countries, and with a large delegation from Britain he attends the Order’s annual pilgrimage to Lourdes with handicapped pilgrims.

Educated at Ampleforth and St. John’s College Cambridge, where he read history, Fra' Matthew, an art expert, has for most of his professional life worked at an international art auction house. As a child he lived in Egypt and Singapore, where his father, Field Marshal Sir Francis Festing, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, had earlier postings. His mother was a member of the recusant Riddells of Swinburne Castle who suffered for their faith in penal times. He is also descended from Sir Adrian Fortescue, a knight of Malta, who was martyred in 1539.

Fra' Matthew served in the Grenadier Guards and holds the rank of colonel in the Territorial Army. He was appointed OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) by the Queen and has served as her Deputy Lieutenant in the county of Northumberland for a number of years.

In 1977 Fra' Matthew became a member of the Order of Malta, taking solemn religious vows in 1991.

As well as his passion for the decorative arts and for history, for which his encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of the Order is legendary, as is his very British sense of humor, Fra' Matthew spends any free time possible in his beloved Northumberland countryside.

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