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Roberta Staley is an award-winning magazine editor and writer with experience reporting from the developing world and conflict and post-conflict zones. Staley specializes in medical and science reporting and is a magazine instructor at Douglas College and Simon Fraser University.

the heart of Kabul

hese days, more phone calls are coming, says cardiologist Dr. Asmatullah Naebkhil, seated in the airy lunchroom of Kabul Medical University Cardiac Research Centre (KCRC) in Afghanistan. They say: pick up your bags and go back to Canada. Naebkhil shrugs. These medical mafia, they just want to scare me, he says. Their private hospital is in danger of closing

An Afghan ex-pat returns home to treat patients in the face of a war zone

Creating a cardiology clinic in the midst of a war zone requires fearlessness, sacrifice, ambition and optimism
because we offer better quality care and free service. Creating a cardiology clinic in the midst of a war zone requires fearlessness, sacrifice, ambition and optimism. Naebkhil has all in generous measure, as well as a burning passion to care for the nations ill and destitute, who have suffered for three decades under foreign invaders and Islamic fundamentalist overlords. The victims are women, children, the elderly and sick civilians, says Naebkhil, the 54-year-old founder and director of KCRC who also calls Windsor, ON home. Naebkhil was a medical student at Kabul Medical University when the Soviet Union invaded Kabul in late 1979. He was thrown into jail, along with more than 1,000 other university students, during a march to protest the Soviet occupation. Most students fled to Pakistan upon their release. Naebkhil, however, continued his education at Kabuls Ali Abad Hospital. Four years later, married and with his country in chaos, Naebkhil fled to India. He won a cardiology scholarship to PGI Chandigarh in the Punjab, one of Indias top medical schools. In 1988, he immigrated to Canada with his family. Like many immigrant physicians, Naebkhils qualifications werent recognized in Canada. However, he found work as a cardiology associate at Mount Sinai Hospital

and St. Michaels Hospital in Toronto and, later, Regina General Hospital. But the grim news out of Afghanistan haunted him. The Taliban invasion of Afghanistan in 1996 brought reports of terror, torture and murder. Naebkhil yearned to help his beleaguered Dr. Asmatullah brethren. Health Naebkhil is doing care in Afghanistan what he can to help Afghan patients through the cardiology clinic he established in Kabul.

opened its doors in 2008minus some very basic amenities. We walked to the male dormitory with buckets to get water, Naebkhil recalls. We didnt have enough money to buy gas to warm the building. If we were lucky, the electricity would last long enough to complete a patient exam.

had been decimated, so why not create a cardiology clinic? With the ousting of the Taliban in 2001 by United States and NATO forces, Naebkhil sprung into action. By now Naebkhil was working at Windsor General Hospital, and turned for help to the Windsor Rotary Club 1918 to help him stockpile enough equipment to create a cardiology clinic in Afghanistans capital city of Kabul. EquipmentECG machines, furniture, heart monitors, treadmills and computersbegan trickling in from Windsor Regional, Mount Sinai, St. Michaels and Toronto General hospitals as well as the NGO Medical Relief International. Afghanistan communities throughout Canada raised money to transport the equipment overseas. In 2007, four shipping containers of medical equipment were loaded onto a tanker in Detroit and sent to Afghanistan. Its final destination was a four-year-old building, originally constructed as a female student dormitory, across from Kabul University. The clinic

He laughs. When I got here my hair was black. One year later it was grey. Today, Naebkhil and his team of nine cardiologists treat more than 9,000 patients a yearabout 30 a daymost of them referrals from all over the country. No one is turned away, and no one has to pay for care. It is a labour of love. KCRCs cardiologists are also professors who are paid the equivalent of $190 a month from Kabul Medical

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University. Every month they must pool their money to buy ECG paper. KCRCs services are desperately needed. Heart disease is epidemic in Afghanistan due to diet, the war, pollution and stress. Afghans diet is high in cholesterol: 80% of the food is derived from milk, cheese and meat. An offshoot of war is a sedentary lifestyle. It is too dangerous to venture outside because of suicide bombings, and many

women never leave the house. Some of those responsible for the violence come to KCRC for care. Ex-Taliban Abdul Salam Rocketiinfamous for his precise missile launching skillssought medical attention at KCRC a few years ago. Naebkhil sent Salam to see Dr. Angila Luqmanie, one of KCRCs four female cardiologists. Near the end of the appointment, Luqmanie, 37, reminded her patient of past

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torments. I told him, you beat us and killed us and tortured us. Salam had the decency, Luqmanie says, to look ashamed. Luqmanie knows first-hand the brutality of the Taliban. As a medical student, Luqmanie was stopped twice by the Taliban morality police on her way to classes and beaten with a rubber truncheon for breaking mahram, the edict that forbids women to walk without a male relative. NATO and US forces are planning to withdraw in 2014, and Naebkhil dares to hope that the changes he has brought to Afghanistan will prevail. When the Taliban get sick, they come to us. I think if they return to power they will remember this, and remember that you need a woman to deliver your children. (In Afghanistan, men

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The only way to cope with the fear is that I believe that I am doing the right thing
cannot perform gynecological or obstetrical procedures due to cultural and religious mores.) Naebkhil is even daring to dream. He is planning to create an Afghanistan National Heart Institute for pediatric and adult heart surgeries. Although NGOs like British Columbias Boomers Trust have been generous, paying for childrens surgeries at a local hospital and donating equipment like a transesophageal probe, Naebkhil looks to Canada for further help. He will need a cardiac surgeon and nurses and financial assistance for salaries and expenses. Then I can pick up my briefcase and go home to Canada, he says with a smile. Naebkhil confesses that he sometimes feels overwhelmed. The only way to cope with the fear is that I believe that I am doing the right thing. The patients that we treat today can sleep without pain and suffering. In this corrupted system and cruel war zone there must be some one to take care of the vulnerable victims of this injustice. As for tomorrowI am not sure what will happen to me. Dr. Asmatullah Naebkhil can be reached at asmatn1@gmail.com

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