From walster@u.washington.edu Tue Dec 26 12:51:32 1995 Return-Path: Received: from homer26.u.washington.edu by lists.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.12/UW-NDC Revision: 2.33 ) id AA01816; Tue, 26 Dec 95 12:51:31 -0800 Received: by homer26.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.12/UW-NDC Revision: 2.33 ) id AA38648; Tue, 26 Dec 95 12:51:30 -0800 X-Sender: walster@homer26.u.washington.edu Date: Tue, 26 Dec 1995 12:51:29 -0800 (PST) From: Wali Noori To: uwracing@u.washington.edu Subject: Fate of thousands in Kabul depends on British nurse (fwd) Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII For those who want to make a difference. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: 26 Dec 1995 14:39:04 -0500 From: AmeriCast-Post@AmeriCast.com Newgroups: americast.ltimes.overseas Subject: Fate of thousands in Kabul depends on British nurse HEADLINE: Fate of thousands in Kabul depends on British nurse PUBLICATION DATE: 23 December 1995 BY: From Michael Dynes in Kabul `Even if the fighting in Afghanistan stops tomorrow, there will be mine victims for 1,000 years' ANNIE SEWELL, the British-born nurse who masterminds the Red Cross's vast medical operation in the besieged city of Kabul, has a reputation for getting things done. In a city of one million inhabitants, where 85 per cent of the buildings have been reduced to rubble, where most of the people are freezing, and where everyone is subject to the daily gauntlet of random shelling, you have to be a bit pushy to make an impact. Yet the fate of thousands of men, women and children depends on this former National Health Service nurse, who trained at St Thomas' Hospital, south London, and who spent 15 months in Sarajevo escorting relief convoys. On her shoulders rests the responsibility for breaching the siege of Kabul so that the capital's hospitals are supplied with the equipment needed to piece together shattered lives. Waiting for the first land convoy to arrive from Jalalabad for three years, her anxiety is palpable. ``We're expecting six Red Cross trucks loaded with 40 tonnes of medical supplies which we need desperately,'' she said. ``It's going to be a tough winter if the local warlords decide not to let it through.'' When the six lorries finally arrive at the Red Cross's Karte Parwan warehouse, next door to the old British embassy complex, Miss Sewell is on site to take control. Her first problem is to reassure the Afghan drivers that they will be reimbursed for the backhanders they had to pay the local warlords to secure safe passage. Her second is to ensure that the convoy is rapidly broken up and dispersed before it can be wiped out by a single rocket. As the long-awaited medical supplies, from huge bales of gauze for dressing wounds to the latest drugs for treating dysentery and diarrhoea, are unloaded by a gang of undernourished market porters, Miss Sewell betrays the first sign of despair. ``The last time I was here in 1992, the Mujahidin were in the hills, President Najibullah was about to fall, and we all thought that that would be the end of it,'' she said. ``Three years later, there has been more devastation, more destruction, and more killing than in the whole 16 years of war. I see no end to it. Everyone is cold and hungry, and there is no end in sight.'' The job was much easier last time. ``We had electricity then. Now there's no power, not even for the traffic lights. So many different groups have shelled the city over the past 16 years. But the hospitals have always been full, mostly of children,'' she said. In the children's ward of the Karte-e-Charn hospital, one of four supplied by the International Committee of the Red Cross, Miss Sewell takes us on a tour, indicating the young casualties. There, beneath the peeling paint and the sandbagged windows, lay row after row of silent children displaying their amputated legs and arms, while being nursed by their anguished mothers. All were victims of the estimated six to seven million landmines laid in the capital, making Kabul the most heavily mined city in history. For these child mine victims, whose bodies are still growing, the agony can last until their late teens. When the bone begins to pierce the stump, they have to return to hospital for further surgery, and a new artificial limb. The cost of making a new leg for a below-the-knee amputation is around $120 (Pounds 78), compared to the $1 cost of the mine that removed it in the first place. There are about 50,000 amputees in Afghanistan. Even if the fighting stops tomorrow, said Miss Sewell, and there is little chance of that, ``there will be mine victims for a thousand years''. RED CROSS APPEAL Donations to the Red Cross appeal for Afghanistan should be sent to: British Red Cross Afghanistan Appeal, Freepost, London SW1X 7BR. Credit card donations: 0171 201 5010. One of the donations received by the Red Cross yesterday, after the coverage given by The Times on Wednesday, was for Pounds 50,000. -- This article is copyright 1995 The London Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. 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