INSIDE AFGHANISTAN’S HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
Transcript
Marco Salustro/
9 min
00:00:05:12 -
VO:
An urgent
ambulance journey to save a newborn’s life.
Baby Zarmina is
just 21 days old and struggling to breath.
The hospital in
her hometown doesn’t have the resources to save her.
So she is rushed to Medicines sans Frontiers in Helmand
capital, Lashkar Gah, more than an hour and half away.
00:00:32:17 - Nurse in
the ambulance (Pashto):
God willing we will get
her there alive.There’s better facilities and she’ll
get proper support
00:00:46:16 -
VO:
Afghanistan
health system is on the brink of collapse.
The Taliban
takeover meant foreign aid dried up and countless doctors and nurses have left
the country.
Now this is the
only fully working hospital avalaible for the 1.5 million population of Helmand province
and is completely overwhelmed.
00:01:11:06 - Joana
Castro, Nurse - Masood Khan, Nurse:
-There is a baby going
home.
How many do you have in
ER?
-We have, err…the Resus
is almost full.
00:01:19:03 -
VO:
Here it’s one
baby in, one baby out.
00:01:22:23 - Masood
Khan, Nurse:
When they are coming to
the hospital… mostly they are coming at the last stages. You know when already
the damage it’s already too far gone.
00:01:41:06 -
VO:
Baby Zarmina
has survived the journey, but her oxygen level is still low.
00:01:51:23 -
VO:
Her parents are
scared and confused by how quickly she became unwell.
00:01:59:05 - Najiba,
baby Zarmina’s mother:
She was fine. I breast
fed her and gave her medicine this afternoon, then she slept and then she
suddenly turned blue and went completely quiet.
00:02:11:22 -
VO:
She’s been
diagnosed with sepsis and will have to be admitted in the neonatal Intensive
care unit for an overnight stay.
00:02:23:13 -
VO:
Back in
Zarmina’s home town Grishk at the local clinic
everyday a crowd gathers begging to be seen.
00:02:32:23 - Nurse
(Pashto):
Listen, don’t allow
anyone inside unless there is an emergency. No-one except for urgent cases.
00:02:40:13 -
VO:
But most have
been turned away. Only the most urgent cases are seen and offered the most
basic care.
00:02:49:20 -
VO:
A young burns
victim.
00:02:53:10 - Burned
child’s father:
Her mum was cooking rice,
my daughter was sitting next to the boiling water on the stove
and she managed to pull it all over herself.
She was so badly burned
that her skin and flesh was peeling off.
00:03:02:06 -
VO:
In unsanitary
conditions, with a severe lack of medicines and a desperate shortage of staff
there is only so much they can do.
00:03:11:08 - VO:
Little Najiya
felt from a balcony and suffered a head trauma.
00:03:18:20 -
VO:
The doctor advices her father to drive her to Kandahar more than 4
hours away for a CT scan as there is no further treatment available here.
00:03:32:05 -
VO:
But the local
Taliban health official insist the situation has improved since they took over.
00:03:38:23 - Rahmatullah
Ishaq, Responsible for the Public Health Sector in Grishk District.:
⁃
Previously those getting in
to higher position in the health sector would only be there because of
bribes.
⁃
With the previous government there was no
transparency. Now thank God, with the Emirate Regime in place, the hiring of
senior positions is done transparently and they pass
the process properly.
⁃
These were problems in the past.
⁃
00:04:07:06 -
VO:
Yet many here
insist they are not getting the help they need.
We were
forbidden from filming female patients. Outside the clinic we heard their
complaints.
00:04:17:22 - Female
patients (Pashto):
They steal the medicine
from here for their private pharmacies. We haven’t been helped at all, the international aid is being misused. I swear to God
no help has been given to us at all.
00:04:34:05 -
VO:
With fighting
in Afghanistan over and Taliban in charge, the roads are safer for people to
travel,
that means 1000
patients everyday turn to the MSF hospital in Lashkar Gah.
Nurses Homeira
Nawruzi and Joana Castro are looking after very sick infants.
00:04:58:22 -
VO:
Joana is
Portuguese and usually works for the NHS in the UK.
00:05:03:08 - Joana
Castro, nurse.:
Every time she gives milk
the baby needs to be up otherwise the milk could go in the lungs.
It’s a really
tiny baby, he needs to get fat.
00:05:20:06 -
VO:
Baby Zarmina
who has been brought form Ghrisk yesterday shows signs of improvement.
00:05:26:17 - Joana
Castro, nurse.:
She had a bit of oxygen
support but now she doesn’t need it anymore and she was put on antibiotics and
now she is breastfeeding and the mother says she’s
really improved. She’s more awake, she’s not vomiting anymore
, so we are happy.
00:05:43:18 -
VO:
But all the
children here are still critical, the most common in Helmand is malnutrition.
Malnourished
baby in this ward are two to a bed.
1.1 million children in
Afghanistan are expected to suffer from it this year.
00:06:05:15 - Omaira
Nawruzi, nurse.:
The malnutrition patients
in Helmand is increasing and when we discharge some
patients, for many reasons they again come and are re-amitted.
One reason is the local
clinics are not working and they can’t get the follow up service and they
become worse, they become sick and come here.
00:06:29:19 - Omaira
Nawruzi, nurse.(Pashto):
Translation: What’s the
patients name? Fareida?
00:06:35:10 - Omaira
Nawruzi, nurse.:
Malnourished patients in
the last 24 hours we had 73 patients admitted, It’s a high number.
00:06:43:19 - Joana
Castro, nurse.:
When I was a child I had a dream that I was going to save the world, I
think we all do, but a lot of problems are political.
00:06:55:16 - Joana
Castro, nurse.:
This is a baby that
doesn’t have a mother so the ward sister is giving her
breast milk that other mothers donated to the baby.
00:07:06:10 - Joana
Castro, nurse.:
Ah. That’s so nice!
00:07:10:02 - Joana
Castro, nurse.:
It’s a daily struggle to
manage all these patients.
Some of them they walked or drove a lot of
hours just to come here and get seen by healthcare professionals so , you know,
giving answer to all this people it’s a daily struggle.
00:07:35:09 -
VO:
Baby Samiullah
was one of those suffering from malnutrition but is now well enough to be
discharged.
His family
invited us to join them as they head home to a village in the countryside
00:07:55:23 - Qari
Mawlawi Saheb Niamatullah Agha, baby Samiullah’s uncle(Pashto):
We eat potatoes from time
to time.
Sometimes we eat and
other times we go without.
We have a cow, sometimes
we have yogurt or buttermilk to eat.
We can’t afford to eat things
like meat, or beans and other things our bodies really need.
00:08:21:07 - VO:
The country’s crippled
economy and rising prices have left so many struggling to eat. The United
Nations now estimates as much as 97% of Afghanistan is believed to be living in
poverty.
CREDITS:
Producer/Director/Camera: Marco Salustro.