Toddler dies following return to Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan – An Afghan toddler taken to the United States for surgery to fix a life-threatening heart ailment died Friday, two days after returning home to a muddy refugee camp from the trip arranged with the help of U.S. soldiers.

Army medical officers said 16-month-old Qudratullah Wardak’s repaired heart had likely given out as his father tried to comfort him in the family’s drafty tent near an American base outside the Afghan capital. The cause of death could not be determined because the Afghan tradition of promptly burying the dead made an autopsy impossible.

The boy had been treated at a hospital in Indianapolis after Indiana National Guard soldiers and the Rotary Club learned of his condition and the family’s inability to find care in Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, U.S. troops had escorted the boy and his father home to a joyous welcome at the camp next to an Afghan military barracks. More than 100 adults and children turned out to greet them in a heavy downpour, applauding wildly when the boy’s father, Hakim Gul, emerged from a pickup truck clutching his son, who looked plump and healthy after the two-day journey home.

Bloom said the boy’s uncle arrived at the U.S. military’s Camp Phoenix before dawn Friday with news of the child’s death. Army medical officers sent to the camp found the child lying under a blanket on a bed placed in front of the family tent, his veiled mother weeping over him.

“He still had glitter in his hair, from the big party they had for him,” Capt. Michael Roscoe told reporters at Camp Phoenix, headquarters of the U.S. training program for the new Afghan army.

Another uncle, Abdul Malik, said the boy seemed well on Thursday evening after receiving a dose of medicine prescribed by the doctors in Indianapolis. But the boy developed problems at about 3 a.m., and his parents woke the rest of the family in a panic.

“His father and mother were putting their hands over his heart and said it was beating very fast,” Malik told an Associated Press reporter at the family’s tent. “They gave him his medicine for pain, and he seemed to calm down. His father felt for his heart again, then he asked me to try, but the heartbeat was gone. Everybody was crying.”

Two cardiologists who helped care for Qudrat during his stay at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis refused to speculate on why he might have died so soon after returning home.

Dr. Richard Darragh said there were no signs of complications when the child was released and cleared to travel.