Piero Corti

Piero Corti (Besana in Brianza, 16 September 1925 – Milano, 20 April 2003), was an italian doctor who chose to work in a hospital in Uganda most of his lifetime.

Childhood between war and illnesses

Piero Corti, whose real name was Pietro, was born in Besana in Brianza on 16 September 1925. His father was Mario Corti, and his brothers included Eugenio Corti, who would go on to be a famous writer and essayist, 4 years elder than him. Piero grew up in a relatively wealthy family, because it had invested in the silk trade at first and then it had moved into the building market.

At the age of 7 he developed a severe case of pneumonia , so he was sent by his parents in a college in Stresa, on Lago (Lake) Maggiore, with his brothers to recover. He came back to Besana during the Second World War. After a bombardment over Milan, his father sent Piero and his brother Giovanni to check their apartment there, and even in that circumstance the teenager showed a clinical gaze at death .

Young Budding Doctor

His deep Christian belief and his unselfish soul developed in him the desire to be a doctor, and in particular a doctor in foreign lands. Despite his friends skepticism, Piero enrolled the school of Medicine and Surgery at the University of Milan, where he graduated. There, in Milan, he met a young girl, Benedetta Bianchi Porro, who was studying medicine to live her life in Africa as a missionary. Piero, who was in love with her sister Manuela, a famous dancer, despite the age gap, was very close to that girl and when he discovered that she was ill, he promised that he would become a doctor in Africa for her and he would work for two . After the graduation, he followed a friend's advice, Agatha Sidlauskas, a psycologist who he met in Italy through her collaboration with Father Agostino Gemelli, and he moved to Canada where he got the specializations in radiology, neuropsychiatry and pediatrics at Hôpital Sainte Justine pour les enfants in Montreal. There, during his studies, he met another canadian colleague who was specializing in surgery,Lucille Teasdale, who had wanted to be a doctor to fight injustice since she was a child and she seemed perfect to Piero for his future projects.

When dreams come true

After some intimacy, Piero and Lucille did not met for a period in which Piero was searching for a place where he could realize his dream. When they met again in Marseille, Piero told Lucille about his seven months in India and Africa, where he had rejoined brother Corrado, a missionary in Chad , and he managed to convince Lucille to go with him for some months to Uganda.

On the 1 May 1961 Piero and Lucille landed together in Entebbe, capital city of Uganda as a British protectorate, where brother Toni Biasin, a combonian missionary, was waiting for them to bring them to Kampala, the city where the surgeon Denis Burkitt operated . He sent them to Gulu , where Combonian fathers had built some dispensaries. They settled down in Lacor, a small village 11 m far from Gulu, on the land of the Acholi tribe.

Piero, Lucille and their daughter Dominique with combonian sisters

The dispensary, run by Combonian sisters who worked there as nurses and widwives, was originally composed of just one pavilion which had a surgery and at least 40 maternity beds . There Lucille began to work as a surgeon and Piero was the anesthetist, the radiologist and the manager. They fell in love and got married in the chapel of the hospital on the 5 December 1961; on the 17th November 1962 Lucille gave birth to their daughter Dominique . As well as the ordinary work and the sanitary business, there was the effort to find funding for the hospital. Piero started an epistolary correspondance with many people, doing several journeys to Europe; he was often in Italy to raise money for medical equipment. The best therapy, at the less price for the greatest number of people, was his motto . In that period very important doctors passed by St.Mary's Hospital, such as Doctor Arshad Warley, South African pediatrician and professor at Makerere University .

The civil war

On October 1962, almost one year later their arrival in Uganda, the former British protectorate reached the indipendence; there were years of political clashes with the rise of the Prime Minister Milton Obote , who broke the constitution, banished president Mutesa and proclamed himself new president, then accused of smuggling with captain of Uganda Army Amin Dada, who became General in 1966. When he knew that Obote wanted to arrest him, organized an uprising and assumed power in 1971 . There were many clushes between Amin Dada's troops and Obote's supporters and he sheltered in the near Tanzania.

The hospital, which was in the middle of the war outbreak , has been raid several times. In this climate of terror, Piero and Lucille decided to send away their daughter, to ensure her a better education, so Dominique moved to Italy .

Despite difficulties, doctor Corti's work kept on well; at the end of 60s the little hospital was enlarged and modernized, new divisions were set up with two theaters, after the authorization of President Amin Dada who visited the hospital in 1976 , new doctors came from Entebbe and even from Italy, a nursery school was opened. Thanks to italin help, Piero could realize another project: health prevention to avoid the bad kwashiorkor syndrome and he was helped especially by Claude Desjardins and his wife Suzanne .

The show must go on

In 1975 Dominique asked his parents to come back to Africa and they decided for her to study in a college in Nairobi .

Meanwhile Piero was becoming more and more estimated among acoli tribe, in fact during an ambush to the hospital, when a soldier threatened to kill doctor Corti, a woman from the tribe saved him. .

Keen on hunting and mountaineering since he was a child, with his friends Enrico Citterio and Paolo Della Porta, met at university, Piero decided a climbing of Cervino mountain , that was held on august 1981, despite the initial skepticism of Lucille. Just one year before another promising doctor came to Lacor, Wilson Carswell, scottish professor at Makerere University, who contributed to make the hospital a qualified center for the training of young doctors from Uganda. . Meanwhile, the first important awards come: Piero and Lucille were promoted " Ufficiali dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana" in 1981 .

In 1982, Piero had a weak heart attack and during his convalescence he met a young black doctor Matthew Lukwiya, who graduated at Makerere University and was specialized in the diagnosis and the treatment of childhood cancers. He was as well an expert of AIDS, a disease which was spreading quickly in Uganda and in other parts of Africa. Matthew became Piero's best colleague, working hard and very close to him and Lucille, who knew, despite his lack of experience, he had a background knowledge better than theirs .

In 1983 the two were at vatican City invited by the Pope John Paul II, who congratulated with them for their work in Africa ; and while struggles in Kampala were getting more and more cruel and made victims every minute, Piero and Lucille were invited to Ginevra to collect the Sasakawa prize from OMS, won because of their appeal to volunteers and midwives in the fight against malnutrition and their organization of "vaccination safaris" in the Northern Uganda territory. .

People conditions were exasperated by a devastating epidemic of enterocolitis and many people, terrified, went to shamans who, with their rites, worsened the patiens , forced to go urgently to the hospital, which, despite difficulties to find equipments, continued to be expanded wiyh new labs, a physiotherapy department and a library .

After the clushes, by the way, only the pediatrics division was full of patiens, replaced by refugees who had nowhere else to go .

On the 7th April 1987 Piero gathered ancient acoli members to decide about the future of the hospital and they suggested a temporary close of it , which was realized after Matthew kidnapping by Upda troops. At Lacor were accepted just the most severe cases and Lucille was busy with the most various operations .

After a six weeks close, finally the hospital was reopened and the direction was given to Matthew while Dominique and her parents went to Japan for a conference .

New climbings, new illnesses, new awards

Once again Piero wanted to climb, so after many tests to prove his health, he left to the Ruwenzori in 1991, while Lucille was worsening because of AIDS, that she contracted after an operation. on the 19th sectember 1993 Piero had a second heart attack which convinced hem to have a rest, spending a couple of weeks with Lucille in a clinic in the Alps .

In 1995, the "Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei" assigned to Lacor Hospital the "Feltrinelli prize" awarding an exceptional and high humanitarian value enterprise. On the 1st May 1995 President Yoweri Museveni inaugurated the pavilion which would host the outpatient service .

Last tragic events

in 1996 a tragic event signed Piero's life: on the 1st August , being awarded member of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, Lucille died after many years of illness and sufferings .

Piero, left alone, hoped in Matthew's help, but unfortunately, even his best doctor in Lacor Hospital and intimate friend died because of pulmonary haemorrhage due to Ebola. It was December the 5th, 2000 .

Doctor Corti kept his struggle for St. Mary's Hospital, that today counts over 300.000 patiens every year and has been chosen to represent the battle against AIDS in Africa, because it has been the first hospital that has identified and confirmed the first AIDS case to the Uganda Ministry of Health.

From 1993 a new tuberculous department has been inaugurated and today it hosts many seropositive patiens .

On March 2002 Piero married Argia, a friend of his childhooh with whom he shared his last years. After many operations to the coronary arteries, Piero died on the 2nd April 2003 in Milan because of a pancreas cancer. He was 77 and he had spent 42 years of his life as a missionery in Africa.

Bibliography

• Michel Arseneault,(in italina) Un sogno per la vita- Lucille e Piero Corti, una coppia di medici in prima linea- Paoline Editoriale Libri, Torino, 2004
• Fondazione Piero e Lucille Corti,(in italian) Dal sogno alla realtà- Lettere dal lacor Hospital Uganda, Corponove Editrice, Bergamo, Settembre 2009

References

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