Gino Strada, the founder of Emergency who prophesied the endless war in Afghanistan

Gino Strada, founder of Emergency and always a champion of human rights, died today at the age of 73. Born in Sesto Fiorentino in 1948, he studied at the Liceo classico Carducci and then graduated in Medicine and Surgery at the State University of Milan, specializing in emergency surgery. Gino Strada had a strong sensitivity, a rare humanity that had led him to become one of the greatest experts in heart transplants and treatment of war victims. Between 1989 and 1994 he worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Peru and Somalia. When he founded Emergency in 1994, perhaps he did not imagine that the NGO would become one of the most important international humanitarian associations that would cure and save around 11 million people around the world. Among the critical positions taken, the most vehement ones concerned Italy’s participation in Afghanistan in the ISAF Operation. In the country now again in the hands of the Taliban, Strada lived 7 years. The Emergency program started in Afghanistan in 1999 and, with 3 hospitals and 40 clinics, has made it possible to treat over 7.5 million people. He was among the first in the 90s to consider the war in the country a mistake and to prophesy that it would not lead to any of the hoped-for objectives. Strada had declared that he had not voted in the political elections for about thirty years, because he was against the foreign policy choices of various governments in support of the missions, the participation of the country in various conflicts and the policies for managing the migration phenomenon. of the various extraordinary commissioners for health in Calabria in 2020, the name of Strada had circulated to fill this role, but in the end nothing came of it. Strada then decided to create and manage a Covid ward in a field hospital in Crotone with Emergency.