Gino Strada

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, he studied medicine and trauma surgery at the University of Milan and graduated in 1978, specializing in emergency surgery. He then studied and trained as a heart-lung transplant surgeon in several major hospitals abroad, including the Stanford University and the University of Pittsburgh medical centers in the United States and the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. Career Strada worked as a doctor at a hospital in Rho near Milan, and soon decided to focus on trauma surgery and the treatment of war victims. In 1988, he began to work as a surgeon with the International Committee of the Red Cross in various conflict zones, including Pakistan, Ethiopia, Peru, Afghanistan, Thailand, Djibouti, Somalia and Bosnia. In 1994, along with his wife and a group of colleagues, Strada founded Emergency, a medical humanitarian organisation based in Milan. Since then, Emergency has treated millions of patients around the world. Strada's first project under the flag of Emergency was based in Rwanda during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and he followed this up by launching projects in Iraq, Cambodia, Eritrea and Afghanistan.