A week ago the skinny, energetic Afghan police officer was on patrol near Spin Boldak along the Pakistan border when his vehicle was blown apart by a roadside bomb.
Then a better fate intervened. Instead of being sent to an Afghan medical facility, where he almost surely would have died, Khan was whisked to the Canadian-run hospital at the coalition base in Kandahar.
"I'm starting to feel much better after seeing the doctors and nurses here," said Khan, 40, gesturing with his bandaged hands in a ward filled with wounded Afghan soldiers.
The 19-bed hospital made of old plywood and canvas tents looks deceptively ramshackle. Garish paintings and graffiti drawn by the U.S. troops who captured the building from the Taliban in 2001 still cover some of its walls.
A raw board with the letters "ICU" scrawled in black ink is nailed to the entrance of the intensive care unit. But inside Canadian doctors and nurses run the place with an efficiency that would rival any major trauma unit in Toronto or Vancouver.
"You see more penetration wounds in two months here than you will see in your whole career in Canada," says Lieutenant-Commander Peter Clifford, an emergency surgeon from Esquimalt, B.C.
The small but fully equipped hospital is very busy, with staff gliding around the crowded rooms with a grace and purpose that one officer called a medical ballet.
It was here that six Canadian soldiers were treated last Thursday after they were wounded in separate roadside bomb and suicide bomb attacks. The troops were quickly stabilized. Four of the men were then airlifted to a hospital in Germany for long-term care and to free up beds for future casualties. Late Saturday night, wounded American soldiers were flown in by helicopter following a firefight near Panjwai.
While these casualties capture headlines, the vast majority of the wounded - - about 90 per cent -- are Afghan National Army troops and Afghan National Police officers. The care they get here is better than anything they could hope to receive in most Afghan hospitals.
"These people are very resilient," said Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques Ricard, the commanding officer of medical services. "They do not complain. They just let us work on them. They are tough."
The staff, which includes doctors and nurses from other coalition countries, work up to 12 hour shifts, but can be called in whenever there is a flood of casualties. With clashes with the Taliban more frequent, the staff have been working full out for weeks.
"They are coming in wave after wave and they are increasing," said Ricard, a 26-year army veteran from Quebec City, his face lined with fatigue.
"They are giving everything that they have. They are being squeezed like sponges."
Most of the doctors fly into Kandahar for intense two-month tours of duty. Many of the nurses and other technicians are here for six months.
The Canadian Forces faces a shortage of hundreds of medical staff and plans to use signing bonuses in recruitment. But those who volunteer to work in Kandahar are people who want to serve their country and help people, he said.
"People actually care," he said.
"That's why the people are showing up. They think this is something they actually have to do."
PUBLICATION: The Hamilton Spectator
DATE: 2006.06.26
BYLINE: John Cotter
No comments:
Post a Comment