Dr Maurizio Cardi is a 60 years old University Surgeon. Since 2007 he collaborates with the Italian NGO “Emergency”. During these years he spent most of his time in Afghanistan where, as a surgeon and Medical Coordinator, was in charge of the surgical treatment of the war wounded patients and of the training of local staff.
Surgery in war setting and in resource poor and low technology environments is gaining
importance and represent a great challenge for the surgeon. Declaration of Alma Ata strongly
reaffirms that health is not merely the absence of disease but a complete physical, mental and
social wellbeing. Surgical care would be highly cost effective in many surgical areas, with
basic trauma care being one of those. 90% of the patients are civilian, as poverty carries social
and sanitary emergencies, with lack of acceptable level medical facilities, trained staff and
effective long term program. However, injuries are a neglected epidemic in these countries
and availability to high standard, free of charge surgical services are far from being satisfied.
“Emergency” is an Italian NGO founded in 994 and promotes a culture of peace, solidarity
and respect for human rights. Intervention in Afghanistan began in 999, and since then we
opened 3 hospitals 999 Anabah Panjshir Valley, 200 Kabul and 2004 Lashkargah –
Helmand) and a maternity Centre (Anabah Panjshir Valley).
Basic points of our intervention are:
1. High standards of cure, free of charge for the victims of war, landmines and poverty;
2. We treat everybody regardless of sex, political and religious issues;
3. We build, organize and run our hospitals;
4. We provide high level training for local staff, and our 3 hospitals are recognized
training centres for afghan residents in surgery and ObGyn. In 20 4 we organized in
Kabul a training program for over 200 surgeons coming from all over Afghanistan,
supported by WHO, European Commission for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection
and Afghani MoPH.
5. We developed a unique pre hospital system of referring to the main hospitals the
wounded patients from the field:
6. We use simple clinical protocols.
Since 1999 we were able to treat over million outpatients, in our hospitals we admitted
25.000 patients, we performed over 10.000 operations and 25.000 children were born in
our maternity centre.