Operation KCH

Operation KCH

Request for Equipment - Can you help?

The Medical Director at the Kabul Children's Hospital urgently needs the following and if you can help please contact us as soon as possible: maggie@systabytes.com.au or phone Australia 02 4926 1990.
Drill set and hand drill
Electric plastic cutting saw
Surgical blades
Chromic suture material (3:0, 1:0)
Silk suture material (4:0, 3:0, 2:0, 1:0)
Vecryl suture material (4:0, 3:0, 2:0, 1:0)
Foreign body removing forceps in different sizes
Head lights
Intracut (IV canulas) 24G, 22G
Surgical gloves sizes 7-9

The following list is not as urgent but important:
Plastic paris
BP machines with paediatric cuffs
Endoscope, proctorscope and sigmoidoscope (paediatric sizes)
Dermatome with blades
Head mirror
Tracheostomy metalic tubes
Paediatric oesophrageal scope
Baby clothes

He also requests surgical equipment for routine operations:
PDS 2%,3%, 4%, 5%, 6%
K-wire in different sizes
sets for the following procedures:
Laporotomy set
Kidney stone set
Bladder stone set
Hernia set
Hydrocephalous set
Thoracotomy set (paediatric)
Hydrospodiasis set (very fine instruments)
Cleft lip and palate set
Electric drills
Giggly saw
Laminectomy set (paediatric size)
Disposable threatre gowns

PLEASE HELP

Acknowledgements

The following people have generously contributed to this project:
Australian Defence Force - transporting the equipment to Kabul
Gerald Tooth - original photographs of the 2002 visit
Limelight Films - graphics
Nursing One (especially Julie Shepard) - raffles, prizes and promotion through nursing leadership forums
Royal Perth Hospital - humidicribs
Sharon Greirson, MP, Newcastle FEC - assistance with transporting the equipment

Jean-Paul outside Accident and Emergency, Emergency Hospital Kabul

Assistance for Mine Victims

Children at the front door of KCH

Jean-Paul Bell writes:
I returned to a very different Afghanistan in 2002 with a multi national group of performers which included Dr Patch Adams, after having visited in November 1975 as both a performer and traveler. We visited schools, orphanages and market places as well as hospitals in Kabul bringing a lot of laughter and joy to people who only 5 months before were virtually prisoners in their own homes under fundamentalist Taliban rule. For a generally cheerful optimistic people the liberation was very welcome and we were sometimes very over enthusiastically received.

The hospitals were bleak and very under resourced. None though were any where near as bad as The Indira Ghandi, otherwise known as The Kabul Children’s Hospital which was built in the mid 70’s as a gift from the Indian government to the Afghan people.

As we entered this ramshackle building, I noticed raw sewerage flowing down the stairs from a backed up toilet on the 1st floor which people just sidestepped, further down the hallway we came across hungry feral cats and children wandering the corridors with ports that looked very infected and way past their use by date.

As bad as it was it didn’t prepare us for what we saw in the wards, filthy mattresses on rusty beds with no sheets with both burn victims sharing a bed with orthopedic patients, rooms with windows that had been boarded up and unventilated diesel heaters spewing fumes into the room. There is virtually no medical equipment in the hospital it’s self, one Humidicrib exists where premature or under weight babies are hot bedded in at times sub zero temperatures for 15 minutes at a time.

The staff are very often on no wages. I don’t think I have ever seen a place so degraded as this. I entered one room to confront a mother with a child who was in such an emaciated state that we felt utterly useless, how could we get a laugh from a child who is starving to death? Without bread there can be no circus.

There was some criticism from staff that when they need medical aid they were sent clowns. The Director was very supportive of our visit and warmly thanked us for spreading laughter and joy. I personally felt very emotional and all of us in the group felt very affected by the experience, I carry it with me to this day and I am committed to helping this hospital. I started collecting medical equipment in 2004, so far I have 2 Humidicribs, they mean a lot to me as I was a premmy baby myself and would never have survived without access to one, unlike my older brother who had died less than a year before without this vital life supporting equipment.

This is what drives myself and my wife Maggie to move second hand medical equipment from a country of plenty to a country of next to nothing. There is much we need. We have the assistance from both major political parties and the Defence department to fly this equipment to Kabul, we need assistance to fly and accommodate ourselves in the city for 5 days and also supply us with more equipment children’s dressings, sutures, jumpsuits, disposable theatre gowns etc.We would both deeply appreciate any assistance you can provide.

Please contact: maggie@systabytes.com.au Your hospital may like to adopt this hospital. If you have surgical supplies especially suture material, entracaps, K-wire, sterile gloves, disposable gowns, baby jumpsuits, and any surplus medical equipment it would be greatly appreciated.