B*N*S*N4

British Army medics save Afghan boy with fatal disease

A Military Operations news article

5 Jan 10

A six-year-old boy gravely ill with tetanus has been saved by British Army medics who flew him several hundred miles from a remote village in Afghanistan to the British-run hospital at Camp Bastion.

When Rahmadullah was diagnosed with tetanus he was immediately evacuated to the British-run medical facility at Camp Bastion
[Picture: Copyright MOD/PA Wire]

Relatives of the boy, called Rahmadullah, became concerned about him after he became seriously unwell at his family's farm in the south-eastern corner of Helmand province, near the Pakistan border.

His father, known as Nicknazer, took the boy to a small local American base, Forward Operating Base Dwyer, where doctors were at first stumped by his unfamiliar symptoms.

They were obliged to pull out text books before they diagnosed tetanus, now virtually extinct in the UK, and advised immediate evacuation to the larger British-run medical facility at Camp Bastion.

Lieutenant Colonel Andy Johnston, a Royal Army Medical Corps consultant physician who treated the youngster, said:

"When Rahmadullah arrived here at Bastion he was having severe and painful muscular spasms which were affecting his whole body and interfering with his breathing.

"He also developed pneumonia and had to be put on a ventilator for nearly two weeks. He was extremely unwell."

The medic, who was previously based at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine at Selly Oak in Birmingham, added:

"This was very much a team effort to get this little boy through his life-threatening illness...

Go read the rest of this great B*N*S*N story here.