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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Afghan child flown to U.S. for surgery


Hakin Gul holds his son Qudratullah, 14 months old, as U.S. Capt. Michael Roscoe, a physician assistant with the 113th Base Support Battalion, gives the boy a checkup Wednesday at Camp Phoenix in Kabul.
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Stephen Graham Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan – A 14-month-old Afghan boy with a serious heart defect began a potentially lifesaving journey to the United States on Wednesday for surgery at an Indiana hospital.

The U.S. military is flying Qudratullah, his impoverished father and a translator to Indianapolis for treatment unavailable in Afghanistan.

Medics from the Indiana National Guard discovered the boy in September in a camp for returning refugees in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and diagnosed him with a congenital heart condition called tetralogy of fallot, or TOF.

U.S. soldiers collected the boy and his father from the muddy camp on Wednesday and brought him to a nearby American base for a check-up. He was to travel to Bagram Air Field, north of the city, on Wednesday afternoon for a flight to Indianapolis via Germany.

“We are very excited that they are taking our child for treatment without charge,” said father Hakim Gul, smiling in front of his family’s tent as more than a 100 neighbors waited to see them off.

Dozens of men pressed forward to shake Gul’s hand after he brought the pale-looking child, wrapped in a blue blanket, to a sports-utility vehicle and urged him to keep them informed of Qudratullah’s progress.

Volunteer surgeons are to perform the open-heart operation at Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis, which has offered to fund the $50,000 surgery through donations. The Rotary Club organization is covering other costs.

Like many thousands of Afghans, the boy’s parents returned to Kabul from Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 but have found shelter only in squalid camps or bombed-out buildings left over from the country’s long wars.