IL CORAGGIO DEL FARE – GINO STRADA

"If one of us, any one of us human beings, is suffering like a dog right now, is sick, or hungry, it concerns us all. It must concern us all, because ignoring another's suffering is always an act of violence, and among the most cowardly."

Who knows what Gino Strada would say about what is happening in Afghanistan or Cuba?

Probably nothing. He would just “just” act.

Gino Strada wasn't a man of many words, at least publicly. He spoke the bare minimum. Everyone described him as "reserved."

He was a man of action. Doing good, selflessly, secularly, without ever a hint of rhetoric or self-satisfaction.

When, given the social weight he had acquired with Emergency, he was asked to enter politics, he reacted with a certain ill-concealed annoyance.

His job was different, and he was one of the best in the world at it. He was a "war surgeon," as the first words of his Twitter bio read. It was precisely this profession, which he loved unconditionally, combined with an equally unconditional hatred of war, that drove him to join the International Red Cross, thanks to which he would operate in areas such as Pakistan, Ethiopia, Thailand, Afghanistan, Peru, Djibouti, Somalia, and Bosnia. This led him, later, to found Emergency, together with his wife and a group of colleagues. "I like this job; in fact, I can't imagine another I could like more," he loved to explain. He didn't call himself a "pacifist." He was against war "because war can't be humanized, it can only be abolished. And I don't like the word 'utopia'; I prefer to speak of a 'project not yet realized.'" "Patients always come first" was his other motto, because Gino always saw them as simple people, human beings above all else. Saving lives was his mission, at all costs, even risking his own, and in doing so he touched the hearts of thousands of doctors and volunteers who, united under that big red-circled E, save lives with the same spirit.

And they saved a lot of them.

With his humanitarian association, over the course of 25 years, he has founded hospitals and first aid points in 18 countries around the world.

Since 1994, the year of its foundation, the patients assisted by Emergency have exceeded 3 million.

Emergency was founded 27 years ago to provide medical care and assistance to those parts of the world where inequality, conflict, and discrimination made, and still make, access impossible.

All because of the love that the “reserved and rebellious” surgeon had for humanity.

Gino passed away on Friday, August 13, 2021 at the age of 73.

Little rhetoric, plenty of love and infinite passion for his work were the key words of a man who, starting from a provincial town armed only with heart and brains, managed to perfectly combine the courage of speech with the concreteness of action.

It's stuff for a few, one might say.

For him it was everyday life.

Gino was one of those people capable of embodying, in the best possible way, that courageous act of remaining human.