Hospital Not Much Help For Afghanistan’s Children Young Ones Injured In War Have Little Hope For Recovery In Frigid, Illequipped Facility

Blasts of cold mountain air slap against the hospital, rattling giant sheets of plastic hung to replace windows shattered by war. Inside, Kabul’s youngest victims shiver.

At Indira Gandhi Hospital, where doctors treat children injured by stray rockets and gunfire, cold can be as lethal as combat. The children wear woolen hats and coats in bed; some wards have no heating at all.

Children have suffered tremendously in Afghanistan’s 15 years of war, and the harsh winter makes their plight worse.

Last month, several malnourished children in the hospital died of hypothermia. Dr. Mohammed Essa fears more deaths in the next two months, when temperatures in Kabul can drop to 5 below zero.

“We don’t have enough oil to warm the rooms, and some drugs are not available,” Essa said.

Almost all schools in the country are closed. Many children have lost both parents to the fighting. The infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the world.

More than 15,000 people have been killed since Afghanistan’s nine main Islamic factions threw out the communists in 1992 and began fighting fierce battles for power amongst themselves.

The Red Cross, one of the few humanitarian organizations to keep its international staff in Kabul, estimates that more than 7,000 people were killed and 25,000 injured last year. Many were children.

The hospital gives faces to the numbers. Here, winds off the snow-capped Hindu Kush mountains make it so cold that young victims shiver on the operating table, said director Dr. Ahmad Mir.

For 10 hours each day, doctors light a small diesel stove. They say they lack the money to keep the stove running continuously. Medicine, blood and heating fuel are scarce.

Outside, life is hardly better. Children as young as 10 man military checkpoints or make hazardous journeys to transport food across the front lines.

One of the few pleasures available to Afghan children is kite flying, and young boys fill the streets with their homemade kites. But that exposes them to rocket and artillery fire that often strikes residential areas without warning.

Aid for the beleaguered capital has been sporadic. The United Nations has brought in only two convoys in the last six months, and the Red Cross has only recently been able to resume road convoys of medical aid.

A U.N. aid convoy was finally allowed through at the end of December, according to Hezb-e-Islami officials, but there are still difficulties in getting aid through.