The boy in the picture is Hashmatullah. He and his father were walking through Darulaman [a suburb of Kabul], Hashmatullah in front, when the father shouted:  ‘Look out, there’s a mine …’ The words were no sooner out of his mouth than there was a terrific explosion right beside Hashmatullah, wounding him in both legs and  seriously injuring his father who died two days later.  By some miracle, Hashmatullah survived but he lost almost the whole of his right leg – it was amputated just below the hip – and half of his left leg, amputated above the knee in what is known as an AK When he first came to our clinic, my wife and our then Field Director saw him and despite one of our technicians saying that nothing could be done for him, insisted on his being re-examined.  Since then he has had several pairs of legs as he continued to grow, but he still has some discomfort in his right hip.

His father’s death had left him as head of the family. His mother went to work as a cleaner, and his four sisters attended a local school.  But when the Taliban arrived in 1996, his mother was forced to stop working and to emigrate to Pakistan with her daughters. She managed to get a job as a school cleaner in Haripur, north of Islamabad.  Hashmatullah stayed on in Kabul, struggling to keep himself by doing odd jobs in the bazaar. He never went to school, but he survived and was able to send a little money to his mother and sisters. He also learned a little English. When Sandy Gall saw him in Kabul in May this year, he was delighted to discover that Hashmatullah had recently been taken on as SGAA's receptionist in the Kabul Orthopaedic Centre [KOC], where he registers all new patients and records their details.  He had to do this by hand, since SGAA did not have enough funds to provide him with a computer.   Then one day Sandy Gall met a friend in England who asked him how things were in Afghanistan.  He told him about the slow pace of reconstruction and offered to send him a copy of an article he had just written for the Sunday Times.

 The article ended by saying that if anything could save Afghanistan it was the indomitable spirit of people like Hashmatullah, whose story he then briefly related.  A few days later the friend sent him a cheque for £2000 which we decided to use to provide Hashmatullah with a computer and software to enable him to transfer all the registration details on to a data base.  A 16-year-old Westminster School boy whose Afghan mother wanted him to see Kabul volunteered to teach Hashmatullah how to use the computer. The visit was a great success and Hashmatullah has now mastered the methodology sufficiently to transfer all the registration data onto the computer.  He is thrilled with his computer and his English is also steadily improving.  His morale, always surprisingly good, is now even better. One might say he has discovered a new raison d’etre.  

Above inset: Hashmatullah, standing on his new legs for the first time.

Below: Hashmatullah (right) now working as receptionist at the Kabul Orthopaedic Centre (KOC).

Since 1986 Sandy Gall’s Afghanistan Appeal (SGAA) has provided artificial limbs and walking aids for more than 20,000 patients and physiotherapy treatment for nearly 50,000 patients. The UN estimates there are approximately 10 million landmines in Afghanistan. The war has continued for the last 20 years. Disability affects about 3% of the population directly and 10% indirectly.

What is Sandy Gall’s Afghanistan Appeal?

SGAA’s first aim was to provide high quality artificial limbs for mine victims and to train Afghan technicians to make and fit them. But it soon became clear there were many other disabilities to be treated, as a result of the overcrowded conditions in the refugee camps.

Today SGAA runs a rehabilitation programme for the Eastern Provinces of Afghanistan from its centre in Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar Province, with a population of three million.

How does the Rehabilitation centre work?

Our physiotherapy departments provide an average of 2000 patient treatments per month. Under strict Islamic law a woman cannot be treated by a man, so SGAA trains female physiotherapists to treat women in a specially built Mother and Child clinic. In 1993 we opened a physiotherapy school for women, with a curriculum that has become standard for Afghanistan. In the two gait-training areas (men’s and women’s) patients learn how to walk with their new prostheses and orthoses.

An Outreach programme run with HealthNet International provides physiotherapy in rural areas in Nangarhar Province. This project also educates the community and local health workers to recognise disability and refer patients to us for treatment.

The component workshop produces for SGAA and partner NGOs more than 200 components a month, walking sticks, elbow crutches, standing frames and rubber feet. We make three types of wheelchair designed by the British charity, Motivation specifically for SGAA. We also train technicians from other NGOs to make the wheelchairs in their own workshops.

SGAA runs training and upgrading courses for physiotherapists and orthopaedic technicians in Afghanistan. These are designed to create a pool of skilled technical staff capable of managing health services at a national level. Since 1987 SGAA has trained over 50 physiotherapists and 30 orthopaedic technicians, many of whom work in other organisations helping the disabled.

SGAA is run by a voluntary committee and consultants in the UK, including a former British ambassador to Pakistan, a professional orthotist, physiotherapist, and an orthopaedic surgeon. Eleanor Gall is the UK Director and Sandy Gall is Chairman. In Afghanistan the project is managed by Afghan staff and monitored by expatriate consultants.

(left) This boy had contracted polio at about the age of two, and couldn’t walk. His father returned from fighting in the war five years later and carried him into our clinic. Here he is standing for the first time with the help of calipers and crutches, next to his father.

Identifying Disability: Children with club feet are common but like post-polio paralysis if identified and treated at an early stage can be cured. A baby born with a club foot can be cured with manual correction and plastering if it is applied as early as at two weeks old. This is why the training of health educators and traditional birth attendants in recognising specific disability is vital.

Can you help us?

Funding for Afghanistan has become increasingly difficult over the past two years. In 1998, the European Union cut our funding for Kabul and halved our funding for Jalalabad. They have now stopped funding us altogether. This has imposed enormous strains on SGAA, but we are still in business thanks to a hard core of loyal and generous donors. If you can help, in any way, however small, you will be doing a real service to many extremely poor and underprivileged people, who still remain remarkably cheerful.

Sandy Gall, Chairman SGAA

For more information or to send donations, this is our address:

e-mail:sgaa@btinternet.com

website:http://www.sandygallsafghanistanappeal.org

Cheques can be made out to Sandy Gall’s Afghanistan Appeal for our account No 3292 with CafCash Ltd. These can then be handed in at or mailed to any HSBC(Midland) bank. CafCash also handle our Deeds of Covenant which can be sent on request.