I realized then that we would have his company during our stay. A strange development and an unusual experience, but one that was to detract from what we were about to see in the heart of Afghanistan’s largest and best children’s hospital, in the center of the capital, Kabul. “We have several wards that I need to show you,” said Mohammed Iqbal, the chief of doctors at Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital, leading me up a flight of stairs. “The first wards are intensive and intensive, follow me.” Image: “We have a lot of chambers to show you,” Mohammed Iqbal told Sky News We entered the corridors leading to the wards, groups of women – mothers – immediately covered their faces, stepping aside or looking for somewhere to stand out. I could hear the children crying from the hallway and as I looked through the ward windows, I was amazed at the sheer number being treated. The chamber wasn’t just full, it was bursting. Baby cribs designed for one child had two or three squished together. Doctors and nurses buzzed the room, checking vital signs and trying to calm crying babies. I’ve seen such poor medical facilities in 20 years of reporting from Afghanistan, I assumed I couldn’t be shocked. In the country’s provinces basic medical care has been the norm for decades. It wasn’t the condition the children were kept in, it wasn’t really the number of children—many desperately ill—it was the fact that this is happening in the best state hospital in the entire country. Even worse was the testimony of doctors to doctors that they cannot keep children with treatable diseases alive because even here they do not have enough drugs, supplies or equipment to properly care for their patients. Afghanistan is in the midst of a worsening medical crisis by the day, exacerbated by an economy in freefall, the freezing of the country’s assets and the drying up of hundreds of millions of dollars in aid that has flowed here for two decades because the Taliban have taken the control. Indira Gandhi Hospital is proof of this. There are over 500 patients in this hospital – they have room for 300. The hospital almost closed last winter, but an injection of aid from the International Committee of the Red Cross provided immediate relief and needed resources, but nowhere near enough. From one to the other the other is the same, jam packed with very ugly babies and children. “Eighty percent of middle-class families used to go to private hospitals for treatment, now they come here, they can’t afford to go anywhere else,” Dr Muhammad Iqbal told me. “There is a need for some good medicines that you don’t buy outside the hospital, that’s the problem, our people are very poor. “There is a need for ventilators, we don’t have ventilators, CPAP machines, and this is a lot [big] need for ICU”. Image: Dr. Salahuddin with his three children, Baheer, Mehrama and Sahar In a cradle, three children, Bahir, Mehrama and Sahar. All have cerebral palsy, along with other medical complications. “This is CP, this is CP, this is CP… three of them are CP, cerebral palsy,” the doctor explained to them pointing to each of their nearly lifeless bodies. “It’s serious,” adds Dr. Salahuddin. Their chances of survival are low, there is no treatment available for cerebral palsy in Afghanistan. Image: Muslimah, 16, and her brother Mansoor Ahmad Aziz Ullah struggles to get his 16-year-old daughter Muslimah out of her wheelchair and place her next to her brother, who is just one year old. They sought help and medical care in two other provinces, Zabul and Kandahar, before coming here. Both children have genetic kidney disease. “I’m worried about her,” Aziz tells me in a soft voice. “The doctors told me that the disease has recently developed in her, this is my fourth child with this condition.” Like two of his children who have already died, Muslimah and her brother Mansoor Ahmad’s chances of survival are already slim. “The probability [survival] it’s very low, I mean 80 percent chance of dying,” Dr. Sharif Ahmed Azizi explained. “We can’t do anything, no, because we don’t have facilities for these patients. “For poor patients we don’t have good patient resources because on the one hand we have more patients. I mean the patient load is very high, from all over Afghanistan patients are coming here and the facilities are very low.” I asked him how it felt to come to work every day knowing there wasn’t much they could do for kids like Muslimah. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do for these patients, for these types of patients … there’s no other way.” Many of the children in care have serious illnesses that could be successfully treated. Looking on from her hospital bed in the background, with her mom sitting next to her, 12-year-old Amina has cerebral meningitis. They are fighting to keep her alive. It’s not a lack of skills here, it’s a lack of resources. The hospital was spotless – and everywhere we looked it was clear that the doctors, nurses and hospital staff were very dedicated. But without the very basic resources it needs, it is on its knees. At some point we were separated from Dr. Iqbal, I went to see if he had been called to his office. I asked one of the staff if the senior doctor was there. After a few moments, he motioned for me to follow him into another office. Inside were two men in black turbans, long beards, clearly Taliban hardliners, sitting and talking. I apologized for the intrusion and said I was looking for the senior doctor and prepared to make my exit. “I’m a doctor, actually I’m a specialist surgeon and I’m in charge here,” said one of the men in perfect English. “You are welcome.” Never make assumptions in Afghanistan, I reminded myself. Image: Dr Muhammad Haseeb Wardak is the chairman of the hospital Dr. Muhammad Haseeb Wardak is the president of the hospital. He agreed to a quick interview and I asked him if international money was needed to help with the hospital’s problems. “We call on the international community to increase its support for us and to continue that support,” he told me. “They (the United States) should unfreeze our money, that’s our hope, that’s our demand.” “This hospital has been here for 50 years and we want more facilities in the hospital and we need more staff and equipment so that we can treat patients who come here from all over Afghanistan,” he added. The impasse between the Taliban and the international community on human rights, particularly women’s rights, remains a major sticking point. And it is the root of many of the country’s problems. As we walked through the corridors of the hospital, a woman grabbed us. She wanted help to buy baby formula for her seven-month-old daughter, Fatima. Wearing the traditional blue Afghan burqa, she looked straight at me and begged for help. This is unusual in Afghanistan today – for a woman to engage so directly with a man, especially a man accompanied by an armed Taliban guard, in a public place. It shows how desperate she is. Malnutrition across Afghanistan is out of control. This hospital had to expand the malnutrition ward to treat more and more new patients. Image: Safiya is very underweight The worst affected come here from all over the country – if they can make it. Seven-year-old Safiya has just arrived with her family. They traveled from Paktia province, about a six-hour drive from Kabul. Safiya is very underweight. Her face is skeletal, she struggles to sit up in the hospital bed. But for the first time in weeks, the family has hope. Her condition is improving after only a day here. “I’m optimistic,” her mother told me. “She’s already much better than she was before we arrived.” But for many other parents on the malnutrition ward, there is nothing but despair. With his mother crying in his bed, tiny two-year-old Shereen Khan lies motionless by his side. He has what appeared to be bed sores all over his back and tubes connected to his nose. His mother Gulbashra, a cleaner from Helmand province, is terribly poor. Choking back tears, she explains that her baby boy, her only child, started getting sick four months ago, but she had to leave him at home to go to work. Shereen Khan has deteriorated and is keeping a constant vigil by his bedside, hoping to make it through. Like so many in Afghanistan, Gulbashra doesn’t care who’s to blame – she just wants her son to live.
