Since 2007, a free, excellent and eco-friendly hospital has existed that has treated more than 1,600 patients. We are not in Switzerland, but in Sudan, the largest country in Africa and one of the most tormented by a civil war that has lasted for more than twenty years.

At the Salam Center, not only Sudanese, not only children

The "miracle" of Emergency it is called Salam, "peace" in Arabic, and it is a cardiac surgery centre that has become a model hospital: "The Centre was conceived to treat patients from Sudan and the nine neighbouring countries. Two years on from its founding, we have treated people from 14 different countries, including some at war with one another. Patients even come from Iraq and Jordan." explains Rossella Miccio, Emergency's Humanitarian Office coordinator.

Cardiac and ischaemic conditions are a genuine emergency, and they do not affect only elderly patients as they do here. All it takes is an untreated bout of rheumatic fever, poor hygiene conditions or malnutrition: "In developing countries, in Africa above all, children do not receive primary-level care and go on to develop these conditions. The average age of our patients is 27, and 30–35% are under 14," says Rossella Miccio.

The Salam Center is also eco-sustainable

The Salam Center is exemplary in its respect for the environment, too, with a solar-panel installation that ranks among the largest in the world, used to cool the Centre, given that the air-exchange volumes required are considerable: "One of the country's main resources is the sun. There are 365 sunny days a year and temperatures reach 53 degrees. In terms of construction techniques, we devised a series of measures that would make it possible to reduce the energy needed to cool the hospital," says Rossella Miccio.

The project extends to neighbouring countries as well

Emergency's story in Africa is moving into a new, revolutionary chapter. Last April, in Venice, Gino Strada and colleagues met with the health ministers of the nine countries bordering Sudan to plan a network of centres of excellence across Africa, with one specialist centre in each country, allowing patients to be referred between them.

The Salam model has worked: "Healthcare and medicine can be a bridge that unites. It is certainly harder to contemplate going to war with a neighbouring country if at the same time you have collaborative projects running with it," Rossella concludes.