Kabul, Janaury 05: The six-year-old boy was in severe pain, his body wracked with muscular spasms and running a “burning high” temperature. The medics at the remote American patrol base in the wilds of southern Afghanistan were not sure what he was suffering from, and his chances of survival were rated at no more than 10 per cent.
Rahmadullah was airlifted to the British-run hospital at Camp Bastion in Helmand with his condition deteriorating rapidly. He had contracted pneumonia and was lapsing in and out of consciousness. After extensive tests, doctors diagnosed that he had been infected with tetanus, a disease very rare in the West but still lethal in poorer countries.
The treatment Rahmadullah received saved his life and he is now back at his home, south of Garmsir in Helmand near the Pakistani border. His father Neknazar, a farmer, who had carried his son in the desperate journey to the patrol base and then on to Bastion, said: “I saw my son getting weaker and coughing. I took him to local Afghan doctors and they could not do anything, and anyway I had no more money to spend on them. Then we went to the base where they told me just how ill he was.
–Agencies