From 1994 to 2024: EMERGENCY Celebrates 30 Years of Providing Free, High-Quality Care

“The hospital of Kigali is deserted. Patients, doctors, nurses, almost all have been killed.
There are five of us, but we will soon be joined by others.”

In 1994, in the midst of the Rwandan genocide, Dr Gino Strada and the first EMERGENCY team began to work. Together, they restored the surgical and obstetrics and gynaecology departments of the Kigali hospital, operating on more than 600 war-wounded and providing care to over 2,500 women in just four months.

30 years later, EMERGENCY continues to provide free, high-quality care around the world.

From operating on war victims in Cambodia and Afghanistan to surgical missions in Libya and Palestine, from providing primary care to refugees in Iraq to conducting search and rescue in the central Mediterranean, from treating children in Sudan to building surgical centres of excellence in Africa: since that very first day in Rwanda, EMERGENCY has cared for more than 13 million people in 20 countries.

30 years of providing care, denouncing war, asserting human rights and promoting a culture of peace, always with the same hope: to one day become “useless”.

Visit our projects page to learn more about our ongoing work around the world.

Quote by Dr Gino Strada in his book Green Parrots: A War Surgeon’s Diary