ONE DAY
“People know that we work for everybody”
Alberto Cairo grew up in northern Italy, abandoning law to retrain as a physiotherapist. For more than two decades, he has led the International Committee of the Red Cross’ (ICRC) orthopaedic rehabilitation clinics in Afghanistan, helping those afflicted by war, polio and congenital disorders. Hundreds of thousands of disabled Afghans have passed through the programme; from car crash victims to Taliban fighters. Here, he takes Lina Hijazi through his day
W
hen I first arrived in August 1990, I panicked. I’d never been in a hospital for war victims before, and it was shocking to see these young people. And the environment: Afghanistan was strange, and completely different to anywhere I’d been before. But there was some kind of chemistry between the Afghans and me, and I was impressed by the kindness and respect they showed me. What also struck me was the
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huge need; this was a place where I could really be useful. I’m up at 4am, and around 5.15am, I start working. The staff and patients come from 7.30am onwards, and it is a battle up to 4pm when everyone leaves. It is a very simple life. We have seven orthopaedic centres across Afghanistan, each divided into three sections: physiotherapy, a workshop for making artificial limbs, and social reintegration, which
offers vocational training, education, microfinance and employment. At the beginning, the programme was only for war and landmine victims, but now we are open to anyone with a disability, no matter what the cause. Each year we see around 9,000 new patients, and about 1,000 to 1,500 are war victims. The rest are children affected by polio, congenital deformities or clubfoot, or people affected by work or car accidents.