One of the reasons why being a journalist is a great job is that you get to talk to some very interesting people. Teresa Sarti was among the most amazing persons I have ever interviewed.

Before she passed away in mid-2009, Sarti was the president and co-founder of a medical charity which has been in the news quite a lot in the past couple of days.

Emergency, an Italian NGO assisting war victims in conflit-stricken countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, was forced to leave the hospital it ran in Lashkar Gah, in southern Afghanistan, after three of its staff, including a doctor, a nurse and a technician, were arrested in an operation led by the Afghan intelligence. Four days later, they are still in custody and risk to face interrogation and trial on terrorism charges.

When I spoke to Sarti, she said working for Emergency was no easy task. Every day you are confronted with death and with the abominations produced by war and conflicts. You fear for your life and for that of your colleagues. You live in a hospital for months, because moving around is too dangerous, and you treat young victims of landmines or cross-fire while your children are safe but so far away from you in your home country.

This is why the organization's staff is carefully selected among professionals who take leave from their comfortable jobs in some hospital in Europe or are even prepared to quit them for good just to go and bring their skills where they are needed the most.

I thought it must take a very strong motivation to do so, as well as to support people who are involved in these activities. Sarti, for istance, was not a doctor, but she led a life far from her husband - Emergency's co-founder Gino Strada - who assisted patients in war zones. She had to get used to being worried for him and for their daughter, who followed her father in one of his most dangerous missions.

When I asked her where she found the strength to go on, Sarti said that when things got really bad, there was a picture she would think of, which made up for all the pain she had to face. She was referring to a video-tape which was sent to her from an Emergency hospital in the Iraqi Kurdistan, which showed a child who had lost his leg in a mine blast putting on a prothesis and running around.

I guess surgeon Marco Garatti - among the 3 arrested - recalls similar memories when he finds himself in difficult situations, like the one he is facing now. For those who understand Italian, there is even a video - shot in 2006 - showing Garatti as he assists injured children in the Lashkar Gah hospital. He says many interesting things, but pictures speak for themselves.

Over 67,000 war victims and civilians who would have had no other access  to medical care were treated in the Lashkar Gah hospital since mid-2004.

This is probably not the best platform for a debate over Afghan and ISAF forces' hostility towards an organization which has always been particularly outspoken in condemning war and militar operations in the region. I am not in a position to say that the video showing guns which were allegedely found in the hospital does not prove the involvement of its medical staff nor that those guns where actually found there.

I do not even want to criticize the Italian government for being so reluctant in asking for clarifications from the Afghan authorities. I am sure all the Emergency staff will be freed soon anyway and they will probably not be able to go back to their hospital. Some may even decide that being accused of leaving their families, jobs, safe lives and - let's say it - relatively high medical salaries - to carry out terrorist attacks in Afghanistan is more than they are prepared to take and they will stop volunteering.

I am only thinking about those 67,000 patients and wondering how many will be denied the same kind of assistance in an area where so many civilians are still victims of conflict and violence while their security forces raid hospitals and arrest doctors.