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CNN Live Sunday

Charity Hopes to Build Children's Hospital in Kandahar

Aired July 28, 2002 - 17:46   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RENAY SAN MIGUEL, CNN ANCHOR: We have more from Afghanistan now. The struggle to help those caught in the violence. There is only one general hospital in the Kandahar region, and Kandahar covers a lot of ground.

Most of the patients are children, suffering from everything from malnutrition to missing arms and legs. Many times there's little the hospital can do to help them, but as CNN's Mark Phillips reports, that's about to change.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARK PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Dr. Scott Harrison is taking a tour through Kandahar's only general hospital. He's here to define greatest needs from medical equipment, to drugs like antibiotics. His main focus is to assess what could be done to improve the treatment of child patients.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Almost every one is an adult. Do you do many children?

PHILLIPS: For the past five years, Dr. Harrison's worked around the world, setting up children's hospitals in some of the poorest and neediest corners of the world. Now, he, and his Christian-based charity, Cure International, have come to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

DR. SCOTT HARRISON, CURE INTERNATIONAL: The needs here are probably greater than almost any place in the world I can think of. The 23 years of civil war has created a loss of infrastructure, which is truly catastrophic for these people. And yet as I've learned in the short period of time I've been here, they're way ahead of where I thought they would be.

PHILLIPS: Twenty-three years of war in Afghanistan has left little infrastructure and almost no medical care. With 1.5 million children patients in Afghanistan, Dr. Harrison feels that there's a need for a hospital specializing in children.

HARRISON: The problems with infectious diseases will be enormous in these children, because they're -- there will be some malnutrition, which makes these children much more susceptible to disease.

PHILLIPS: So, on this dusty field outside Kandahar, the region's governor, Gul-Aga Arzai (ph), attends a ceremony to lay the foundations for the new Cure children's hospital.

The hospital is expected nine months to complete, at the cost of $1.5 million U.S. The charity hopes that when it's completed, its doors will have room for as many as 100 beds and care for more than 10,000 sick children every year.

Guma Amana (ph) arrives at this, the only hospital in the region. He's traveled three hours from his village to find someone who'll help his 4-year-old son.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): This is the only hospital I know of. This is the only place I can bring him.

PHILLIPS: The little boy Nabibullah (ph) fell ill two days ago. His father says two of his five children have already died from illness.

Mark Phillips, CNN, Kandahar, Afghanistan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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