UB Community Rallies to Provide Textbooks to War-Ravaged Medical School in Afghanistan

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Members of the University at Buffalo community, at the request of a UB alumnus who was serving with the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in Afghanistan, have joined the international effort to improve medical care in Kabul and the surrounding area by donating and shipping 40 boxes of medical textbooks to the war-torn region.

Richard Lee, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics IN the University at Buffalo's School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and Pamela Rose, Web services and library promotion coordinator for the university's Health Sciences Library (HSL), rallied their peers to donate textbooks and, with the help of students, set up a book collection point in the HSL.

On Jan. 24, Cheektowaga native Lt. Col. James J. Gardon, who received a bachelor's degree from the UB School of Nursing in 1986, sent a simple email query to UB asking for help getting professional journals and medical textbooks.

"To say the least, it (the Afghan health-care system) is in terrible shape after 20-plus years of turmoil, especially after the Taliban," Gardon wrote. "One of the greatest needs expressed to me by physicians and hospital/medical staff is the need for professional journals and particularly medical books. They even expressed a preference for English texts. Many of their texts were burned by the Taliban simply because they were 'Western.'"

At the time he made the request, Gardon was in Kabul as part of the Coalition/Joint Civil Military Operations Task Force, charged with assessing and assisting United Nations and non-governmental agencies in re-establishing their presence in Afghanistan. A Desert Storm veteran who worked as an emergency/trauma nurse during that conflict, he was part of the public health team that is evaluating the medical infrastructure in Kabul and the rest of the country.

Nearly six years of Taliban rule and a decade-long war with Russia that ended in 1989 has left Afghanistan's health-care infrastructure in a shambles.

Nearly two-thirds of the Afghan population is without access to basic health-care facilities, and according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the situation is worse in rural areas, with

a doctor-patient ratio as low as 1 to 100,000. Infant and maternal mortality rates in Afghanistan are among the highest in the world. One in four children will not reach the age of five, most dying of vaccine-preventable diseases like polio and tuberculosis. And every year, 17,000 women die from complications related to childbearing.

But, he explained in a subsequent email message, "during the 1960s and '70s, Kabul University's medical school was one of the premier medical schools in Central Asia, and now the school is in the process of rebuilding."

Gardon said that one of the first places he thought of asking for medical textbooks was his alma mater.

His initial query for help was fielded by Hugh Jarvis, Web team information coordinator for the Department of Creative Services in University Communications, who monitors email sent to eUB, the university's front door on the World Wide Web.

Both Gardon and Jarvis agree that the project was expedited because of the Internet.

"This is an ideal example of how you produce a Web site to facilitate information flow," said Jarvis. "In this case, Lt. Col. Gardon was able to find our Web site from Afghanistan, make his request, and we were able to quickly connect him with people who were ready and able to help him out. The Web is all about rapid connections: people to people, and people to information."

Jarvis forwarded Gardon's request to Rose, who, in turn, contacted Lee.

"Dr. Lee mounted an initiative in the medical school, and I sent the call out over a number of library avenues," Rose said.

The lobby of the Health Services Library served as the collection site and Lee and Rose coordinated the sorting, packing and shipping of the textbooks. About 40 boxes of books were shipped to Afghanistan, with 26 of the boxes coming from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. Another 20-30 boxes will be sent forward within the next few months -- donations still are coming in every week.

"Dr. Lee and Ellen Dussourd (director of International Student and Scholar Services at UB) provided initial funding for the project and Ellen is working to arrange future funding," said Rose.

While the medical school in Kabul will be the primary recipient of the shipment, other health-care facilities in Bagram, Herat and Konduz also will receive textbooks.

"The staff of the medical school and the librarian told us they didn't even have one book for every five students, let alone undergrads," Gardon added.