Gino Strada (21 April 1948 – 13 August 2021) was an Italian war surgeon, human rights activist, peace activist, and founder of Emergency, a recognized international non-governmental organization.

Early life and education

Gino Strada was born on 21 April 1948 in the Milanese suburb of Sesto San Giovanni. After attending the Giosuè Carducci lyceum,

Strada's main focus throughout his career was to help victims of war, including direct casualties of conflict and also those who, as a result of war, had no access to healthcare, leaving them vulnerable to preventable diseases.

After the United States invasion of Afghanistan, Strada negotiated with the Taliban leader Mohammed Omar when NATO deemed it impossible to deal with the group, in order to operate a hospital behind their frontlines. Strada then opened a new maternity centre in Afghanistan in 2003, which became a reference point in the Panjshir Valley and the surrounding provinces. The centre was recognised by the Afghan ministry of health as a centre of specialisation for gynaecology, obstetrics, and paediatrics. By 2013 Emergency was operating four hospitals and 34 clinics, while the Red Cross had withdrawn 95% of its personnel from the country on the grounds that the war had ended. Since 2001 up to that moment, "NATO forces" had yet to build civilian hospitals in Afghanistan, Strada claimed. Strada worked in the centre until 2014, and today it has treated patients from 30 different countries, both within Africa and further afield. The idea for the Salam Centre for Cardiac Surgery came from Strada's belief that the basis for the freedom and quality of human beings with regard to dignity and rights must also extend to the right to free treatment without discrimination: "If you think of medicine as a human right, then you cannot have some hospitals that offer sophisticated, very effective, hi-tech medicine", he says, "and then go to Africa and think, 'OK, here's a couple of vaccinations and a few shots'. Do we think that we human beings, we are all equal in rights and dignity, or not? We say, 'Yes, we are.'" – interview in The Observer, 2013.

This belief also meant that in 2009, Strada contributed to the creation of the ANME (African Network of Medical Excellence), with the aim of promoting the construction of Medical Centres of Excellence across Africa, based on the model of the Salam Centre for Cardiac Surgery. In 2017, construction began on the second centre to form part of the network, the Centre of Excellence in Paediatric Surgery in Entebbe, Uganda, based on a plan drawn up by Strada's friend, Renzo Piano. Together, they have a daughter, Cecilia Strada (b.1979), a journalist. Shortly after Teresa's death in Milan on 1 September 2009, Cecilia was elected to take over as president of Emergency.

Strada married Simonetta Gola, Emergency's communications manager, in June 2021. On 13 August 2021, he died of a heart attack while on vacation in Rouen, France, at the age of 73.

Notable views

  • "If any human being is, in this precise moment, suffering, or ill, or hungry, that is something that should concern all of us because to ignore the suffering of a person is always an act of violence, one of the most cowardly."

Books

  • Pappagalli verdi: cronache di un chirurgo di guerra, 2000, .
  • Buskashi. Viaggio dentro la guerra (A Journey inside war), 2003, .
  • Gino Strada, Howard Zinn Green Parrots. A war surgeon's diary, 2004, .
  • Gino Strada, Howard Zinn Just war, 2005, .

Awards and honours

  • In 2001, Strada received the journalistic prize Golden Doves for Peace awarded by the Italian Research Institute .
  • Asteroid 248908 Ginostrada, discovered by Italian amateur astronomer Vincenzo Casulli in 2006, was named in his honor.
  • In 2016, Strada was named as a co-recipient along with Sakena Yacoobi of the Sunhak Peace Prize.

See also

  • List of peace activists

References

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  • Emergency official website
  • EMERGENCY USA: Life support for civilian victims of war and poverty
  • EMERGENCY UK - life support for civilian war victims
  • The Salam Centre for Cardiac Surgery
  • PBS POV Documentary: Afghanistan Year 1380
  • The Horror of Landmines by Dr. Gino Strada