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Gallery|Poverty and Development

Inside a frontline hospital in Afghanistan

Amid a growing Taliban insurgency, doctors at Boost Hospital in volatile Helmand Province rush to save lives.

Afghan Doctors/Please Do Not Use
Surgeons operate on a child in Boost Hospital in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. In 2015, doctors here performed more than 3,400 surgeries. Sixty-five percent of them were emergency or urgent interventions. [Karishma Vyas/Al Jazeera]
By Karishma Vyas
Published On 22 Jul 201622 Jul 2016
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Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan – Every three days in Afghanistan there’s an attack affecting hospitals, health workers and patients, even though medics are supposed to be protected in conflict zones. 

On October 3, 2015, during a lull in fighting between the Taliban and Afghan forces, a hospital in Kunduz run by Doctors without Borders (MSF), was bombed for one hour and destroyed by the US army. Many have described the incident, which killed more than 40 civilians, as a war crime. The US military denies that and calls the incident a mistake.

Seven hundred kilometres away, in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, lies the MSF-supported Boost Hospital.

The news from Kunduz shocked the staff there. 

“From all sides, health workers are supposed to be protected all over the world. I knew some of the workers in Kunduz, so when we lost them, I was upset,” said Dr Saeed Abbas Sadat, who has worked in Boost’s emergency room for five years. 

Medics at Boost Hospital are inundated. Hundreds of new patients can be admitted in one day, and the paediatrics ward is particularly busy treating malnourished babies and those born prematurely – the youngest victims of Afghanistan‘s war. Doctors say it can take time to reach the hospital because of fighting and attribute a high prevalence of premature births to the stress of living with conflict.

Like the destroyed Kunduz trauma centre, Boost is dangerously close to the battlefield. 

The hospital’s medics treat anyone who walks through the door, working hard to save lives, despite fearing for their own.

In Afghanistan: Medics Under Fire, 101 East’s Karishma Vyas meets the dedicated medics at Boost Hospital, and investigates the dangers facing health workers on the frontline in the wake of Kunduz.

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Afghan Doctors/Please Do Not Use
A child cries in the inpatient ward of Boost Hospital. A study by medical NGO Doctors without Borders (MSF) found that 80 percent of patients here faced conflict-related delays in reaching the hospital, including checkpoints, landmines and fighting almost every day. [Karishma Vyas/Al Jazeera]
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Afghan Doctors/Please Do Not Use
A child recovers in the paediatrics ward of Boost Hospital. The facility is so overwhelmed by sick women and children that it often has to accommodate two or more patients per bed. [Karishma Vyas/Al Jazeera]
Afghan Doctors/Please Do Not Use
Dr Saeed Abbas Sadat at home with his four children. Dr Abbas has been working in the emergency room at Boost Hospital in Helmand Province for five years amid a growing Taliban insurgency, but he says he won’t leave: 'This is my country, these are my people, and this is my hospital. [Karishma Vyas/Al Jazeera]
Afghan Doctors/Please Do Not Use
Baby ‘Abdullah’ was admitted to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit of Boost Hospital on May 18, 2016, suffering from malnutrition and severe diarrhoea. His parents couldn’t bring him to the hospital for more than a month because of incessant fighting between government forces and the Taliban in their village. [Karishma Vyas/Al Jazeera]
Afghan Doctors/Please Do Not Use
A baby cries in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit of Boost Hospital, run by medical NGO MSF. Healthcare remains a major problem in the country, which has one of the world’s highest rates of maternal and child mortality. [Karishma Vyas/Al Jazeera]
Afghan Doctors/Please Do Not Use
A mother and child in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit of Boost Hospital, run by medical NGO MSF. [Karishma Vyas/Al Jazeera]
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Women and children wait to see a doctor in the emergency room of Boost Hospital in Helmand Province. [Karishma Vyas/Al Jazeera]
Afghan Doctors/Please Do Not Use
A medic in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit cares for a baby in an incubator. Boost Hospital has a 24-bed ward for babies under 30 days old - many of them were born severely premature. Doctors suspect that extreme stress owing to the ongoing war is causing some mothers to deliver early. [Karishma Vyas/Al Jazeera]
Afghan Doctors/Please Do Not Use
Twins sleep in an incubator in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of Boost Hospital in Helmand Province. More than 12,700 babies were delivered at the MSF-run facility in 2015, with 32 percent of them being complicated deliveries. [Karishma Vyas/Al Jazeera]


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