With all the foreign manpower, latest medical equipment and weaponry, why are there still people existing who haven't had medical assistance in a decade?
One reason could be that we've bombed all the hospitals and those few remaining have been in the process of being rebuilt for years. Afghanistan is now supposed to be a democratic country, but it still remains primitive - more primitive in fact than it was a decade ago.
If 10% all the trillions spent on nuclear warheads could have been invested in the betterment of the people in these war torn countries - perhaps we wouldn't have the global refugee problem which is becoming worse each day.
Where are the American medicos?
IT has been nine years since the people of Chuckajuy in eastern Oruzgan Province had any medical support.
This week, Australian military medics conducted a clinic in the medieval village bazaar and 100 people flocked in from near and far.
Sadly, none were women.
In this isolated region of Afghanistan, women remain indoors or hidden behind a burqa and the idea that they could be treated by male medics, let alone foreign men, is as abstract as primary school education.
Children in these struggling mountain villages spend their days tending goats or working the fields and, like one young girl whose leg was fractured two years ago and not properly set, they carry illnesses with them like Australian kids carry toys.
Many injuries are tended by local "witch doctors" who rely on remedies like tomato soup to treat serious burns.
Small, undernourished boys and girls, 40 year-old men who looked 60, and 60-year-old men who looked 80 lined up to consult the Aussie medics and their Afghan comrades.
Kids looked on wide-eyed as their brothers or sisters received the first real medical care of their young lives.
The medics did what they could for a variety of ailments and dispensed simple medicines, using sign language to convey the dosages. Local man Hamadullah, 35 (but looking 70), said the people were happy that medical help had finally arrived.
"It has been nine or 10 years since we had any help here," he said through an interpreter.
Mentoring team commander Captain Dean Schmidt, 48, from Brisbane, said word about the clinic had only gone out the day before and yet people had trekked for hours from isolated valleys to get medical care.
"I have never seen a crowd like this since I have been in Afghanistan," he said.
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