November 4, 2001	Sunday	Shaba’an 17, 1422

PESHAWAR, Nov 3: The Edhi Foundation has provided life-saving drugs and other relief goods to the Jalalabad Hospital, which is short of doctors, equipment and medicines and where doctors have been conducting operations without giving anaesthetic to those injured in the US air strikes on Afghanistan.

Dr Arshid Kazi, official in charge of the infinite rescue and relief of the foundation, told Dawn that Jalalabad health director Mulla Sher Ali Hanfi had asked for assistance through a formal request on Oct 19.

“We have established our centres along the Pak-Afghan border at Spin Boldak near Chaman, Parachinar, Torkham and Khar in the NWFP for rescue operations. We have put all other centres on high alert to tackle the situation if it worsens”, he said and added that “so far, the foundation has provided 500 quilts and truckloads of medicines for wounded people. The hospital is full of injured, including children and elderly people.”

Replying to a question, he said he had not seen any injured militant in the hospital, but other people were brought daily for treatment. The foundation, he said, had a rescue and relief team, comprising two doctors, two nurses and one coordinator, at the Edhi centre in Jalalabad.

“Our main centre at Torkham screens patients and provide them with treatment on case-to-case basis. Those seriously injured are provided with medicines and transported to Peshawar, where they are taken to government hospitals”, he said and added that the 450-bedded hospital constructed and managed by the ICRC had become a worst place for the injured, converging from all over Nangarhar and Kabul.

A senior Khyber Medical College doctor, who visited Jalalabad three days ago, told Dawn on Saturday that Afghan surgeons had done over 100 surgeries without administering anaesthetic to the injured during the last three weeks. “They daily receive 20 to 30 patients and handle about four emergency cases. The doctors are short of medicines and anaesthetic, but they do operate upon seriously injured people.”

The doctor said the only equipment-repairing workshop had been destroyed during the US bombing around Jalalabad a week ago, and added that the hospital needed more ambulances to fetch the injured   from surrounding villages of Jalalabad.

He said the Edhi Foundation was said to have decided to donate them some vehicles. Mulla Sher Ali, a senior health department official, told Pakistani doctors that they (the Taliban) had identified   about 18 most affected areas, where US planes had dropped bombs repeatedly during the last 20 days.

It was the only hospital, he said, which was catering to the needs of the Afghans.