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Ten years of activity of the “Salam” Centre
Ten years ago, on April 19th 2007, we opened the Salam Centre for Cardiac Surgery in Khartoum, Sudan. It was the first completely free-of-charge Cardiac Surgery centre in Africa, and some people did not understand our reasons: “Why spend so many resources on highly specialised care, when you can die from a simple diarrhea in…
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Do even the younger ones need to get used to living in fear?
One afternoon, Rayyan and his cousin decided to clean up the small park near their home in Al Muthanna, East Mosul, so that they could start playing football again. They took some rakes and bags to collect debris and they went to the park, about a hundred metres from home. “It seemed like a quiet…
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“I cannot imagine what it feels like to be in this situation”
Sunday was a national holiday in Iraqi Kurdistan. The country celebrated the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, which until 9th April 2003 had systematically repressed the Kurdish population. Although it was a national holiday, Ghamgen was working. She is a nurse and like every other day she travelled from neighbouring Sulaymaniyah to one of EMERGENCY’s…
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The Mosul family
“You got to the hospital in tears, clutching your only daughter, unharmed, in your arms, and accompanying your only son, wounded but still alive. You sat in a corner, stunned, looking lost, dirty clothes, unshaven, with this small child wrapped around your neck. You couldn’t feel hunger or thirst anymore. And then you burst into…
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Mokhtar, who experienced war first-hand
Mokhtar arrives in the emergency room of the Emergency Hospital with shrapnel in his chest and a door handle in his pocket. He is 70 years old and has experienced war first-hand; losing a son, sister-in-law and two of his five grandchildren. “He never leaves the house in Mosul,” says his grandson, “it is the…
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“He had just gone into the yard to play”
“He had just gone into the yard to play,” are the words that the father of Rayid repeated to the doctor. Rayid is ten years old and had just arrived at the hospital. He lost two fingers from his left hand and had multiple lacerations on his face and chest. His “crime”? He went to…
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“It is always easy to be moved by this occasion”
?”A few days ago, we participated in the awarding of diplomas to new business apprentices from our Rehabilitation Centre in Iraq. We are already on the 35th apprentice group, each made up of former patients who were disabled due to war. This group, however, had something special: all 18 students — among them, four women…
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The first stone of the new Centre of excellence for Paediatric Surgery in Uganda
Today, in Entebbe, Uganda, EMERGENCY NGO founder Gino Strada and architect Renzo Piano, in the presence of President Museveni and Minister of Health Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, laid down the first stone of our new project: a Centre of excellence for Paediatric Surgery, which will be built at Lake Victoria, 35 kilometers from the capital,…
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“Different choices, but the horrors of war have struck them both”
Marwan’s mother has been living in hospital for two weeks. She has nowhere else to go. Before the combat started, she and her husband discussed their options at length. Should they escape to an uncertain future, perhaps in one of the refugee tent-camps sprinkled on the outskirts of Mosul, in the middle of snow and…
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Back in Erbil
“We treated patient number one 19 years ago. This was during a different war, and a different time. Thousands of wounded have passed by these walls, and through these operating rooms. Today the hospital is not the same. The prolonging of the crisis brought the clinic to its knees. There are not enough resources. For…