Gino Strada and Emergency

Through Emergency, Strada also spearheaded the construction of hospitals and clinics in places that lacked access to medical care. Guided by his belief that quality treatment should be available to all people regardless of socioeconomic circumstances, Strada insisted that Emergency facilities be built according to the same standards as those in the West. “If you think of medicine as a human right, then you cannot have some hospitals that offer sophisticated, very effective, hi-tech medicine,” Strada told the Guardian in 2013, “and then go to Africa and think, ‘OK, here's a couple of vaccinations and a few shots.’” 

Strada was born in the industrial town of Sesto San Giovanni, Italy, the son of a steel worker and a homemaker. He studied medicine at the University of Milan, and later received training as a heart and lung transplant specialist in the United States and South Africa. In 1988 he joined the International Committee of the Red Cross, traveling as a surgeon on relief missions throughout Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Strada’s encounters with victims of military violence – the vast majority of them civilians – galvanized his anti-war views.

In 1993, Strada, his wife Teresa Sarti, and several of their friends formed Emergency. They launched their first mission a year later, traveling to Rwanda to provide medical treatment in the aftermath of the genocide. Strada subsequently worked as a surgeon in Iraq and Cambodia, before arriving in Afghanistan in 1998. The organization established its first surgical center in Panjshir Valley in 1999, followed by an emergency hospital in Kabul in 2001. During this period Emergency was also politically active at home; its advocacy campaign played a vital role in Italy’s 1997 decision to ban the manufacture of landmines. 

Strada continued to practice emergency surgery for over two decades, working in such conflict zones as Sierra Leone, Sudan and Yemen. He died of heart failure on August 13, 2021. At the time of his passing, Italian architect Enzo Piano – designer of the Emergency pediatric hospital in Entebbe, Uganda, and a close friend of the surgeon – spoke of Strada’s commitment to humanist ideals. “He was one of these people with a simple, clear belief about science, about solidarity, human solidarity, even about beauty,” Piano told the Guardian in 2021. Indeed, Strada’s unwavering belief in the inherent dignity and equality of all human beings remains one of his most enduring legacies –and still guides his NGO’s mission today.

Contributor: Stephen Meyer