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| Afghanistan |
| At Afghan Military Hospital, Graft and Deadly Neglect |
| 2011-09-04 |
| American officers deployed as mentors in Afghanistan's main military hospital discovered a shocking secret last year: Injured soldiers were routinely dying of simple infections and even starving to death as some corrupt doctors and nurses demanded bribes for food and the most basic of care. The discovery, which hasn't previously been reported, added new details to longstanding evidence of gross mismanagement at Dawood National Military Hospital, where most salaries and supplies are paid for by American taxpayers. Yet the patient neglect continued for months after U.S. officials discovered it, as Afghan officials rebuffed American pressure to take action, multiple documents and testimonies viewed by The Wall Street Journal show. The way senior Afghan officials tolerated such deadly graft shows just how deeply rooted corruption has become in President Hamid Karzai's administration, as well as the limits of Washington's ability to rein it in. American advisers have since forced an improvement in conditions at the hospital. Afghan policeman Ali Noor Hazrat had been admitted to Dawood hospital after being injured in a Taliban rocket attack on a police convoy last fall. Initially patched up by American doctors, he spent his last days starving there while his brother Sher sold off what little land the poor farming family had in order to bribe nurses and doctors for care and food, the brother said in an interview. In photos, Ali's flesh hangs off his frail, boney frame, his eyes heavy with pain. He died on Dec. 27, Afghan government documents show. "Malnourished/starvation," said an internal coalition slide showing Mr. Hazrat, dated Nov. 5, prepared by American mentors at the hospital to document abuse cases. "Willful neglect," another bullet point said. Sher Hazrat is determined that none of his relatives in the eastern Nangarhar province will consider joining Afghan security forces after what happened at Dawood. "If there's no service for us," he says, "why should we serve our country?" |
| Posted by:Eohippus Phater7165 |