The world’s most crippled country

Read this quote, an excerpt from an article in today’s Toronto Sun:

It is doubtful whether any place on Earth has a larger proportion of disabled and often discarded citizens, eking out an existence on the margins of charity.

Can you guess which country the reporter is talking about? Surprisingly, it’s not Angola, not Iraq, not Sudan, not the DR Congo…this list could grow quite long actually.

The reporter is writing about Afghanistan, a country that is suffering from an equation of a multi-decade long war, land mines, birth defects caused by “clannish intermarriage,” and a lack of basic health care.

I read an article, perhaps in the New York Times, about American soldiers patrolling the rural and mountainous areas of Afghanistan. A soldier gave his account of what it was like, as a military doctor, to encounter Afghanis, who would bring him their young children hoping for a cure. But these children didn’t come with symptoms like a simple cough, they had eye problems, autism, open wounds, broken bones; issues he wasn’t trained or able to handle.

Public health issues, unrelated to HIV/AIDS or malaria, aren’t typically high-priorities for many foundations or non-profits. But click here, for the full article, to find out why they should be.