Nov 12, 2002 4 min read

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Marie cuddles her emaciated 3-year-old son. Humair leans over a cracked respirator that feeds oxygen to her unconscious nephew. The electricity is gone.

The incubators aren’t working.

The generators are only used sparingly because there isn’t much fuel.

And there is no sign of help – or at least, not enough – from an international community that vowed to help the Afghan capital after the Taliban defeat.

This week marks one year since the fall of Kabul, and the Children’s Hospital is desperate for supplies and funds. Some assistance has been coming. There is more medicine today than under the Taliban, because international agencies have a greater presence.

But beyond that, those working and seeking care at Kabul’s only hospital for children cannot see how things have improved.

“We have nothing in this hospital. The world doesn’t think about us,” Humair said, resting her head in her trembling hands, refusing to look up, watching her nephew grasp for a breath.

“Where is the money they said they would give? We haven’t seen any of it,” she said.

President Hamid Karzai was asking the same question.

In an interview Sunday at the presidential palace, Karzai called the children’s hospital a tragedy, and he questioned what had become of the international community’s commitment to help his poor nation.

“The money is not getting to the people who need it. We are not seeing development money. This is what we need. This is what we are asking for, not emergency assistance, but long-term help,” Karzai told The Associated Press.

In the intensive-care unit, cots lined the walls, each occupied by tiny patients, some wrapped in woolen blankets, others cradled in their parents’ arms.

One father wiped his child clean with a dirty red cloth, but mostly it was women who crowded the room. On some beds, there were two and three women, some lying with their sick children, others soothing them, one rhythmically patting the back of her sleeping infant. Earlier that day, an 18-month-old boy died because there wasn’t the $6 to buy the medicine he needed, said Abdul Wazir, a nurse.

“We just didn’t have it, and the parents didn’t have the money to buy it,” Wazir said. “We have no medicine, no electricity, no water. Nothing is working.”

Decades of war have decimated Afghanistan’s infrastructure. At a conference on aid to Afghanistan held in January in Tokyo, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said $10 billion would be needed to rebuild the war-shattered nation. The world pledged $4.5 billion and so far hasn’t given even $1 billion.

The U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, reported last week that an Afghan woman dies in childbirth every 20 minutes. The report emphasized the woeful state of the country’s health care.

It said three-quarters of babies born to mothers who die in childbirth will themselves die within the first year of life, mostly from malnutrition due to lack of breast milk.

The global charity CARE International looked at the international aid given to countries following conflicts and discovered Afghanistan was at the bottom of the list.

On average, donors pledged Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor $250 per person. To Afghanistan, they pledged $75 per person in 2002 and $42 per person over the next five years.

Jamila, the nurse earns about $30 a month but she hasn’t been paid in two months.

In the hospital, kerosene stoves heat rooms with eight beds each. Cold wind blows through broken windows that line the long, dirty corridors.

Mohammed Yasin, whose young son was born with a brain defect, picked up a small white candle and said, “This is what we use at night.” He pleaded to tell the world that the hospital has no brain scan.

Yasin’s son has been in the hospital for 20 days, and, every night, the electricity has gone off. Occasionally, the generator is turned on, but only to operate the water pump to get water to the bathrooms.

“I complained to the hospital administrator. I said, ‘You have to have electricity. How is this possible in a hospital?”‘ said Yasin, a teacher at the Military Academy.

Humair whispered prayers as she nervously eyed the long, green oxygen cylinder that fed her nephew.

In a nearby corner, another cylinder leaned against the wall, broken.

It was barely dusk.

The lights went out again.