Posts Tagged ‘civilian casualties’
Medical missions in Afghanistan. How civilian casualties are treated?
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 4, 2013
Medical missions in Afghanistan. How civilian casualties are treated?
Tuesday, July 5, 2011.
I am in neurosurgery mission at the pediatric medical Institute for Afghan children of Kabul. Usually, I perform 30 operations in my frequent visits to Afghanistan.
Six years ago, I diagnosed cancer cases in 4 patients within my three-week stay. This rate has increased sharply: I am facing 4 cancer cases every day, and many deformed babies.
A 18 year-old boy is suffering of a Schismatic syndrome. I had ordered a scanner in urgency 3 days ago, and still no news.
Another kid, 10 of age, has a cardiac malfunction of tetralogy of Fallot type, and I also diagnosed an abscess in the brain between the frontal and temporal lobes.
There are no rooms in the intensive care unit.
I consulted with the competent anesthetic Charlotte for the next morning set of surgical operations.
At about 5 pm, the scanner revealed that the boy requires an operation very quickly in order to remove a craniopharyngione cyst. The boy had lost his right eye, and the acuity of his left eye is declining due to hormonal perturbation.
The boy had lost both his parents during the civil war and was barely surviving on small jobs in the province of Takhar, 600 km from Kabul.
The operation is delicate, but sending this patient to India or Pakistan would cost $8,000. I have limited equipment that I brought with me from France, and I can make do thanks to competent anesthetics and surgeons in the staff.
I prescribed a MRI and got involved to get results today: I am leaving back to France within a couple of days.
The department of radiology demanded $160 for the MRI and the boy and his cousin had to try securing financial aid from social services, even when the cost was reduced to $100.
I managed to contact the boy and convinced the admission to perform the MRI gratis.
It is 9 pm and the boy is in front of the closed doors of admission. Another round of negotiation and explanation.
Kate, the association director, agreed to take care of all the expenses of the surgery.
It is 10 pm. The pieces of the puzzles are falling nicely in place and I recuperate a couple of instrument from my brother’s home.
Midnight, I get a call from the boy’s cousin: No blood in the blood bank. I think that it is feasible to do the surgery without additional blood.
A couple of hours nap and I am up at 6 am. Six other surgeons are observing this rare operation.
The microscope is showing signs of weakness and I used a magnifying glass. The intervention is a success.
I had a light breakfast and started my next surgery on the kid.
At 3:30 pm I check on my first patient in reanimation: He is awaken and doing fine. The working day was supposed to finish at 7:30 pm.
My brother is throwing a farewell party for me, and I see the invitees with half closed eyes.
Afghanistan was bombed in 2002 with 3,000 tons of depleted uranium (DU), 60% as active as the enriched uranium used in nuclear power plants. The dust of DU, if inhaled or digested, disturb the process of the formation of the embryo through cellular splitting and division.
The new-born suffers terrible malformation: No head, no eyes, no hands, no legs, no nose, no lungs…The DU particles attack the brain, the nerve cells, the thyroid, the lymphatic ganglion…
Six years ago, I used to witness 3 cases of cancer during my 3-week stay. Currently, I have to deal with 4 cases every day.
In Iraq, new-born with no eyes have increased 250,000 times the normal occurrence.
Note: This story was taken from “The Devastation” by the French/Afghanistan neurosurgeon Ahmad Ashraf
Israel to bomb chemical weapons in Syria? Would the civilian casualties be forgotten as “collateral damages”?
Posted by: adonis49 on: September 26, 2012
Israel to bomb chemical weapons in Syria? Would the civilian casualties be forgotten as “collateral damages”?
The vast recent war maneuver of Israel in the Golan Heights (in occupied Syria territory since 1967), and the simultaneous and concomitant maneuvers in south Lebanon, demonstrates the decision in Israel to bomb the chemical weapons in Syria, for various reasons:
1. For two years now, Israel of Netanyahu PM has been disseminating the suffocating smokescreen that Iran is the nemesis, particularly its nuclear program. On the assumption that “Islamic Iran” intends to produce an atomic bomb and impose its theocratic regime in the region. The real objective of this propaganda was to forget the Palestinian problem and relegate it to the bottom of the list of priorities in the US Administration.
It is working and the Palestinians are feeling helpless and neglected and not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
But Israel is unable to bomb anything in Iran and the US is not ready to be carried away in a war project that the end results are at best inconclusive and blurred… The US knows that any military engagement in Iran has to be a full-fledged, wide scale confrontation…? Why?
Just “Bombing nuclear installations” will pressure Iran to actually produce the atomic bomb. And the closing of the Hermuz Straight is not that difficult at all, regardless of scores of “demining” ships in these water.
To bomb Iran, Israel has to cross the air spaces of many Arab States, and it is doubtful that the people in these Arab States are to believe that their governments were taken by surprise and didn’t give their approval…
Otherwise, Israel has to use US bases or US aircraft carriers to reach the Iranian airspace: A de fact US declaration of war…
In any case, the Israeli citizens and the military are not hot about these military projects and they voiced their opinions and refusal to this hazardous idea pretty bluntly…
2. Now that Israel is not capable of bombing Iran and the US is not ready to get engaged, Israel has to diffuse its military incapacity by bombing targets that can be reached. Like what? Syria supposed chemical installations. As Israel did by bombing Syria supposed nuclear installation in Deir al Zour in 2007, and the one in Iraq in 1980, without any perceptible political flaps internally and externally.
In the last two weeks, Israel and the western States have been spreading the possibility that the Assad regime is about to use chemical weapons on the armed insurgents, and relocating the weapons to various “unknown” location for the serious eventuality of being bombed by Israel…
Israel is under the previous assumption that, also this time around, the bombing of chemical installation will go unchecked in any serious reactions, since the western nations are in favor of such “local engagement” and does not disturb the flow of oil and gas…
Israel wish that this bombing will decide Iran to provide a “casus belli reason” for the western nations to get engaged militarily against Iran…Will not happen. And the probability is high that the reactions from the Assad regime and Hezbollah in Lebanon will drag the military confrontations to over a month, as it happened in 2006 during the preemptive war against Hezbollah and all Lebanon.
Netanyahu thinks that his government is cohesive enough to try this bombing project. The main difficulty is that the soldiers going to the front are not the ultra orthodox or the sons of liberal capitalists: They are these liberal citizens who are paying the taxes and the body count so that the ultra orthodox and liberal capitalist classes reap whatever advantages any preemptive war generates in the short-term.
It is no longer what the radical right-wing ultra capitalist governments in Israel wish in matter of military actions that will decide the army to obey: It is “Are the soldiers ready to go along with another foolish military excursion, with no tangible benefits to the economic situation and the welfare of the middle classes?”
Note: https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/how-serious-is-a-preemptive-military-attack-on-iran/
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