Where were you when

Loma Linda answers a call for help from Afghanistan

Mawlawi Hamdullah Numani, the minister of higher vocational education for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, presents Loma Linda University and Medical Center president B. Lyn Behrens, MBBS, with an Afghan rug. Mr. Numani visited Loma Linda in 1998 to help reestablish an educational connection with his country.

In central Asia lies the landlocked country of Afghanistan. A bit smaller than Texas, it is a country of rugged mountains with peaks reaching 24,550 feet. It is a country scarred by political and military upheavals during nearly 20 years of war.

Traveling back and forth between the United States, the People's Republic of China, and Afghanistan is School of Medicine dean emeritus G. Gordon Hadley, MD. Dr. Hadley, who is also president of Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital in Hangzhou, the People's Republic of China, recently completed a six-week stint to assist the medical school in Kabul.

Dr. Hadley is no stranger to Afghanistan. His first introduction to the country came in 1960 when he received an invitation from the Afghan government to teach pathology at the Jalalabad medical school. The school asked Dr. Hadley to bring a histology technician with him to assist in the teaching process.

"I knew of no one qualified who would agree to go off on such a venture," Dr. Hadley says, "so my wife, Alphie, agreed to learn how to use a microtome and thereby cut and stain slides. Alphie worked in a laboratory at Loma Linda and at the California Tissue Tumor Registry in Los Angeles. In six months she became very proficient."

As a faculty member during the 1960s, Dr. Hadley taught general pathology to second-year students, and special pathology to third-year students. The school operated on the French system, with students spending seven years in medical school, entering medicine in what would be their freshman year of college if they were in the United States.

This was the beginning of a partnership with the Afghan people.

After a one-year stay, Dr. and Mrs. Hadley and their family returned to the United States. In 1967, Dr. Hadley was asked by the World Health Organization of the United Nations to continue his work at the Afghan medical school. Dr. Hadley accepted and arrived in Kabul in March of that year.

"We had a warm welcome," says Dr. Hadley. "The students and faculty had become very close to us."

Over the years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dr. Hadley and a number of physicians from Loma Linda rotated teaching responsibilities at the Afghan medical school.

In the late 1970s, contact with Afghanistan was temporarily halted as a result of civil unrest and war.

G. Gordon Hadley, MD (seated), dean emeritus of the School of Medicine, his wife, Alphie, and Benjamin J. Siapco, a clinical laboratory scientist, scan teaching materials from a textbook for use in an Afghan classroom.

In 1998, connection with Afghanistan was reestablished with Loma Linda through a visit by Mawlawi Hamdullah Numani, the minister of higher vocational education for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, to Loma Linda. As a result of his visit, a small group headed by Joan Coggin, MD, MPH, vice president for global outreach for Loma Linda University Adventist Health Sciences Center, and Michael Ryan, EdD, director of Global Mission for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, traveled to Afghanistan to survey the situation as it related to medical education.

"What we found were hundreds of bright, young students eager to learn, but with essentially no books, no laboratories, and no teaching facilities," Dr. Coggin says. "The copper wiring had been literally stripped out of the buildings by individuals to sell."

It is to this situation that Loma Linda has been asked to give assistance in helping upgrade the current medical educational system.

Recently, Loma Linda asked Dr. Hadley to go back for a short period of time to help teach the medical students. Dr. And Mrs. Hadley traveled to Afghanistan in late 1999 and then returned in March of 2000 for a six-week teaching stint.

"The people of Afghanistan asked us for help," Dr. Hadley recounts. "During our recent visits I met a large number of physicians, many of whom were former students of mine. These physicians are now hospital superintendents, chiefs of surgery, and the like. I felt really at home. They want us to help develop their laboratories and to once again help teach their medical students."

Dr. Hadley says returning is not difficult. When they hug you and say, 'please come back' it is difficult not to go back. So we are doing the best we can. What we need so much is media for teaching--that is what we are trying to do. We are helping to reestablish their teaching laboratories, to make teaching slides, to obtain textbooks and other medical materials for the students to read, and to conduct classes in the usual, normal way.

"We are hoping we can establish some sort of a bilateral assistance program with Afghanistan where we can send visiting professors to teach in the medical school," he points out.

These young students are the future of Afghanistan," Dr. Hadley continues. I have to admit that my heart is in Afghanistan when I see the terrible need they have right now.

"These young people represent probably the most brilliant of the young people. They have passed their entrance examinations to medical school and they are very anxious to learn."

"The government wants the medical school classes to be taught in English. The current government insists that all students in the educational system study English. The opportunity for developing a medical school and developing standards is very good," Dr. Hadley emphasizes.

"Loma Linda University and Global Mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church are looking for ways to partner together. We are now looking to construct an apartment near the medical school to house our visiting faculty," Dr. Coggin says. "We hope that this will soon be a reality."

Over the past year, LLU&MC have supplied the Kabul medical school with educational supplies and equipment, including basic laboratory materials to set up and equip a tissue laboratory in their laboratory department. Loma Linda has also equipped the Afghan medical school with a video projector, computer, copier, up-to-date textbooks, and other teaching aids, according to Dr. Coggin.

"The goal for us in Afghanistan," Dr. Hadley concludes, "is to answer the need. Go back to Matthew 25. In the final analysis, we are going to be asked, 'Where were you when I was hungry and needed help?' The Afghans need help now. They want us to help them. The Church and the people who know about it feel that we should try to fill the real need--the human need--when we are asked."

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