A SCREECH of a vehicle, car doors opening and loud footsteps broke the afternoon silence enjoyed by Evangeline Cua of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF or Doctors Without Borders).
A scream of “Please save my son!” in Pashto and a staccato of commands from doctors punctuated the air as Cua and other health workers cut with surgical scissors the bloody perahan turban sticking to the skin of a young man.
A gunshot severed an artery and the loss of blood—it took four hours to get them to the hospital—threatened the young man’s life. Loss of limb or loss of life ran through Cua and every medical personnel that day.
The father begging for a miracle already lost one son after an airstrike on Kunduz, some 300 kilometers from Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul. Kunduz, home to about 270,000 people, was the fourth regional capital to fall into the Taliban’s hands after the United States began withdrawing its troops from the landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia.
Continuing life
IT was one of the heavy days of fighting when the young man was brought to the hospital, recalled Cua, a Filipino field surgeon and hospital clinical director of MSF in Kunduz. It was only when the young Afghan was wheeled into the emergency room did they realize his father was also wounded.
“They were sleeping in their house when an air strike happened. He had only two sons and one of his sons died immediately. The other one was wounded. [His gunshot wound punctured] an artery so he might have also died,” Cua said. “[Good thing] his father placed a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. But it took them more than four hours to access the hospital and seek [treatment].”
Their initial assessment of the young man’s injury made them less optimistic. The injury and the length of time it took them to get to the hospital threatened to cost the young man his arm, if not his life, according to Cua.
It wasn’t happening that day: the young Afghan kept his arm and his life. Thanks to Cua and the medical team in Kunduz.
A reality
TWO girls were not so fortunate.
Cua remembered the girls: one 9-year-old; the other, 10.
A break from the exchange of gunfire gave the girls a chance to play on the streets. A landmine caught their eyes.
One of the girls picked up and threw the instrument of war. The explosion ripped through a leg of the 9-year-old girl. The older one sustained injuries on her lower limbs.
“Losing your leg at the age of nine is really devastating. But this is the reality,” Cua said. “I have these nephews who are of the same age as them. Just imagining them being brought to the hospital with these injuries… I think it’s not fair.”
In witness
THESE are just some of the horrific images Cua witnessed working for the 92-bed hospital.
She was one of the survivors of the October 2015 US airstrike on the only center in the Afghan city of Kunduz that provided high-quality, free surgical care to victims of all types of trauma.
According to the MSF, it was early morning of a Saturday, October 3, when a US AC-130 gunship “fired 211 shells on the main hospital building where patients were sleeping in their beds or being operated on in the operating theater.
“At least 42 people were killed, including 24 patients, 14 staff and 4 caretakers. Thirty-seven people were injured,” the MSF said. “Our patients burned in their beds, our medical staff were decapitated or lost limbs. Others were shot from the air while they fled the burning building.”
Cua was trapped in a pit.
On the MSF website, she wrote: “When the volley of shots in the surroundings stopped, we started crawling towards a building, several meters from where we were.”
But instead of leaving, Cua stayed as they tried to rebuild the MSF Trauma Center.
Becoming complicated
ACCORDING to Cua, her primary motivation in doing so has been her desire to help people who are most in need of services that doctors like her can provide. In many of these places, access to medical services can be difficult and knowing that she can do something to help unburden these people is enough reason for her to go back.
The work that she does in war zones is challenging but it also comes with a sense of fulfillment that, at the end of the day, a child’s life was spared or a young man can look toward a future with his limbs intact.
She admitted that the situation now in Afghanistan has, indeed, become complicated. This despite the uneasy calm in the city after the Taliban, also known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, took control of the country.
More awareness
MUCH uncertainty clouds the hearts and minds of these workers in Afghanistan. Many know the work that needs to be done is as immense as the threats to their persons.
Cua said some of these include weighing whether the new dispensation in the country would respect the neutrality of medical workers, especially women like her, and not lead them to harm.
Yet, she still chooses to be optimistic because of what she knows about the Afghan people. And she believes the world should also know this about them.
“Afghans are just like any other people in the world. They also want to live a peaceful life. They want to work in the morning and come home at night without fearing they’d get shot while walking to and from work,” Cua said.
“Kids here are also like kids in other parts of the world. They also want to go to school; they also just want to play. I don’t know what the political solution will be for this one; it’s beyond my comprehension,” she added. “But everyone has to be more aware that these things are happening.”
Images courtesy of AP/Shekib Rahmani and AP/Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi
Read full article on BusinessMirror
