CARLO URBANI

Biography

Carlo Urbani was born in Castelplanio, in the province of Ancona, on the 19th of October 1956.

Even in his youth he was dedicated to the most needy and was a familiar face in the parish: helped to collect medicines for “Mani Tese” (extended hands), promoted a solidarity group that organised holidays for disabled people, became part of the Parish Pastoral Council; also played the organ and performed songs. His great love was not just for others, but also for beauty, music and art.

The desire to look after suffering people lead him to choose medicine and specialize in infectious diseases. After graduation, he initially worked as a GP, then he movedl to the department of infectious diseases at the Hospital of Macerata, where he remained for ten years. In the meantime he married Giuliana Chiorrini. Together they would have three sons: Tommaso, Luca and Maddalena. These were the years when Carlo began to feel more strongly the call to assist the forgotten sick, neglected by wealthy countries, the power game, by the interests of pharmaceutical companies. With other medical organizations, from 1988-89, he organized visits to Central Africa, to bring help to inaccessible villages. Once again his parish community accompanied and supported him with an aid bridge to Mauritania.

The hands-on knowledge of African issues clearly showed him that the causes of death among Third World populations were too often treatable diseases - diarrhea, respiratory problems – for which medicines were missing and no one was interrested in supplying such a poor market. This actually involved him to the point where he decided to leave the hospital, even when he had the chance to become head physician.

In 1996 he became part of the organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MsF)“Doctor without Borders” and left with his family to Cambodia, where he undertook a project for the control of schistosomiasis, a parasitic bowel disease. Here, too, he would detect the strong social and economic reasons for the spread of diseases and lack of care: people are dying of diarrhea and AIDS, but the medicines to treat the infection and complications are impossible to find.

In his role as advisor to the World Health Organization for parasitic diseases, he had the opportunity to reiterate that the primary cause of the spread of diseases is poverty. Like with “Doctor without Borders”, Carlo’s primary interest was the care of the sick, but he could not remain silent on the causes of such suffering.

In January 2000, Carlo Urbani told the newspaper Avvenire: "My job is a consultant of the WHO Parasitic Diseases. In all international assemblies it is repeated that there is only one cause: poverty. In Africa I came fresh from studying. And I was 'frustrated' to find that people are not dying of strange diseases: they were dying of diarrhea, respiratory problems. Diarrhea is still one of the five leading causes of death worldwide. We don’t treat it with medicines which are impossible to find. One of the last challenges that MsF has welcomed is the participation in the global campaign for the access to essential medicines. And that's where we have used the funds of the Nobel Prize".

In April 1999 he was elected president of MsF Italy. In this role he took part in the delegation that collected the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the organization.

After Cambodia, his involvement led him to Laos, and then Vietnam. In the last weeks of his life, he was couragously dedicated to the care and research on SARS (Severe Actute Respiratory Syndrome), the terrible respiratory disease that threatened the entire world. And well aware of the risks for himself, however, talking with his wife, said: "We must not be selfish, I have to think about others." In early March he went to Bangkok for a meeting, nothing suggested that he had contracted the infection. On arrival the symptoms manifested and Carlo, among the first to deal with the disease, understand his situation very well. Hospitalized in Bangkok he warned his wife to send the children back to Italy who were sent away immediately. The love for people who accompanied him throughout his life, forced him to deny the last embrace in order to avoid any possibility of infection.His wife remaineds close, but no direct contact was possible.

After receiving the last rites , Carlo Urbani died on the 29th of March 2003.

* edited by Pierluigi Fiorini.