High-risk operation: The rebuilding of Afghanistan's medical system

After physicians who fled the country years ago returned last fall, they urged U.S. assistance to focus on women's and children's health.

By Amy Snow Landa, AMNews correspondent. Jan. 6, 2003.

The night their daughter was born, Habib Baha, MD, and his wife were afraid they would not make it to the hospital. Armored tanks patrolled the city enforcing a strict nighttime curfew.

Driving to the hospital meant risking arrest. Dr. Baha's name was already on the Communist government's list of anti-Marxist troublemakers. A few days earlier, he had been released from a prison camp after serving a six-month sentence for expressing his political views. Returning home, he found he had lost his position at the medical school where he taught anatomy for 13 years. He then went to the bank and found that it had been nationalized, his account liquidated.

Now it was just after midnight. His wife was in labor with their fifth child. They had to risk it. Dr. Baha helped his wife into the car and drove.

The year was 1979. The place: Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Soon after the birth of their daughter, Soviet troops invaded. Dr. Baha and his wife and children fled to Pakistan with the little money they had. They would move to Germany and later to Texas before settling in San Diego. Dr. Baha would once again teach anatomy, this time at a training center for medical technicians.

No family member went back to Afghanistan, even for a visit. Then last fall, Dr. Baha got a call from the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services asking him to travel to his homeland to help assess the country's health infrastructure.

Having rebuilt his life in the United States, Dr. Baha saw the offer as a chance to help rebuild the shattered medical system of the country he escaped. "I felt it was time," he said.