Mohammad’s Story Shows the Legacy of War in Afghanistan. 

Driven by poverty, Mohammad had gone in search of scrap metal to sell, in order to scrape together some money.

One of those objects, however, was an unexploded mine.  

That is how Mohammad, 60, lost two fingers and wounded his left hand. This happens a lot in Afghanistan. 

The first hospital he was taken to cost money: after only one night, Mohammad had to leave it.  

“I am too poor to afford treatment and medicine,” he tells us.  

It was on the recommendation of some friends that he came to EMERGENCY, to our Surgical Centre in Kabul. “There they will treat you well and won’t ask you for money. Everything is free, they told me.” 

In our hospital, Mohammad feels safe, “like a baby in his mother’s belly.” 

But imagining his future after he leaves here worries him greatly: what will his life be like if he can no longer work?  

Incidents like these are one of the legacies after decades of war in Afghanistan.