By KUNA,
Kabul : Afghan and American surgeons together saved the life of a 10-year-old Afghan girl by removing a 10-pound tumour from her abdomen through surgery.
The girl, Tor Pekay, from the western Farah province of Afghanistan, was brought to Farah hospital for problem in her stomach.
Dr. Patrick McGraw of the Farah Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) assisted by Dr. Hamid Rahmani of the Farah hospital performed the surgery.
On completion of the surgery, the doctors removed a 10-pound tumour from Pekay’s abdomen, said the US military officials here.
“That tumour weighed 10 percent of the girl’s body weight,” Captain McGraw said.
Pekay’s family grew desperate when their daughter stopped eating and drinking, and had constant pain. The family began to search for help.
“If we didn’t do something to help her out, she would have died in a few weeks from starvation and malnutrition,” said Dr. McGraw.
Pekay is now eating, drinking and recovering at the ISAF medical centre. Her family says they wake at 3:00 am (local time) each morning to begin the long trip to the medical centre to see their daughter.
“I was compelled to bring her to Farah PRT to see what they could do for her,” said Pekay’s mother Kemia. “Now she is quite fine. Now she is getting healthy,” said the jubilant mother.
Captain McGraw is planning to send the tumour to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for further studies, the US military said.
Decades of war and civil strife and the nearly five-year misrule of the hardliner Taliban regime had rendered thousands of Afghans homeless and hundreds of thousands others migrated from their areas to save their lives.
In such a situation, the infrastructure, like schools, hospitals, clean drinking water facilities were destroyed and Afghans living in the border areas either go to Pakistan or Iran for getting health facilities. Those having means also go to India and some European countries to get better health facilities.
According to Health Ministry officials, hundreds of mothers die each year during delivery just because there are no medical centres to provide them the timely facilities.
Besides, there is dearth of trained medical staff in the available medical centres and dispensaries in the remote districts and provinces.
Doctors and nurses prefer to work in big cities but they shy away from going into remote districts to serve the people becuase of involvement of serious security risks.