"Progress"

Today we went to the Teaching Hospital associated with Nangarhar University – operated by the Ministry of Education (versus the Ministry of Health, as is the Public Hospital). Words cannot express the great tragedy of this place… this is not a rural hospital or clinic located in an unsecured area, where maybe you could understand and offer SOME explanation of the condition (of the TEACHING hospital no less); but instead it is located in the middle of Jalalabad, so there are no excuses in my humble opinion. We’ve seen some bad places in our travels, and this is by far one of the saddest stories. There were points at which I would have been hard pressed to speak, and Pete pushed us to get out of a few rooms a little more quickly for the same reason.

The 240-bed hospital sees more than 400-500 outpatients per day and handles 50-60 new admissions each day. I’m not sure if that includes the people sitting outside the hospital with IV bags hung from trees?

Each wing has a name plate that denotes the NGO or governmental agency (from all over the world) that have donated, and then later left the hospital, and its director, to try to continue to keep it funded and running… which is difficult to put it mildly and explains in a lot of ways the lack of affect we saw in his face – good people all over trying to make a difference and beaten down by a system that has failed them. The doctors and staff were recently (again) not paid for months and only just started to see some of their salary and pay come through… hence the tendency for all the private clinics.

There is no money for even cleaning supplies. As we walked into the pediatric ward, there was a pool of blood on the floor of the waiting room swarming with flies. 30 minutes later as we walked out someone was using a squeegee and bucket, of what we’ll at least hope was clean water, to wash it into the drain located in the middle of the ward entrance hallway, where a burqa-clad woman holding onto the hand of her barefoot toddler happened to be walking through at the same time.

I have to wonder (among so many other things) what message and “teaching” is really being done here – or can be done here at this time? We’ve certainly seen the possibilities elsewhere, and how a little can go a long way. Now it’s time to cut through the bureaucracy and make it happen. Lives are at stake in more ways than one.

Unbeknownst to us prior to our tour, this was the same hospital that was visited in 2006 by Dr. Dave Warner… I had seen the pictures and saw the piece aired on CBS News… you tell me, which pictures are from today and which are from 2006…. http://projects.mindtel.com/2006/0506.jbad-06/nu-hospital/

Like I said earlier, the children get me every time.