"This is my lifetime dream coming into reality, and I always wanted to do something positive for the Afghan people in terms of health education and health care." (3:33)
MOTHERLAND AFGHANISTANA documentary about the deplorable conditions for pregnant women in Afghanistan
PBS documentary
I began to realize that I had made really a huge mistake taking this job. I couldn't do enough to change things under these circumstances."
Those were the words of Dr. Qudrat Mojadidi who is an OB/GYN and was forced by political pressures to emigrate from Afghanistan to the U.S. in 1972.
The highest infant mortality rates in the worldMotherland Afghanistan was filmed by the doctor's daughter, Afghan American filmmaker Sedika Mojadidi, who traveled with her father and mother to a country who has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.
A blessed countryIf these infants were born in the United States -- there is no question that they would live. But because of their country being in turmoil, they have no lifesaving equipment. I was floored when i watched a preemie baby who could not be helped because the hospital did not have any heat lamps, oxygen maps that fit the babies mouth, or even a heart monitor - a local afghan man had to keep the heartbeats time standing beside the doctor by motioning his finger back and forth like a piano timekeeper. It made my stomach sick.
The preemie infant dies later and the Dr. comforts the mother by saying that it was God's will and that she will have another child.
As i was sitting there at 3 a.m. nursing ava and watching the show on PBS, the reality of our great blessings really hit me. Maybe because we are surrounded by prosperity, we forget the great poverty and horrible conditions for other women across the world. Here, i had an ultrasound, epidural, great care, a state of the art room to have my baby and across the world, a woman sits on a cot being comforted because her surving preemie twin dies after a couple of days because the hospital does not have the bare necessities.
If you want to learn more about this film, go to
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/motherlandafghanistan/film.html. It will really move you to pray that more will be done.
Here's more...In 2003, nearly two years after the Taliban’s fall, he is invited by the U.S. government to helrehabilitate the largest women’s hospital in the country, Rabia Balkhi, now under U.S. sponsorship with a newly re-named Laura Bush Maternity Ward. He returns to his homeland with great hopes that with U.S. funding, he can help set in motion the large-scale changes necessary to stem the epidemic of maternal mortality in the country.
But when Dr. Mojadidi arrives at the Laura Bush Maternity Ward in Kabul, a city still plagued with danger and unrest, he finds deplorable conditions, with limited supplies and unsanitary facilities. As he tries to bring hope to the ward and make the best of archaic equipment and an untrained staff, the film introduces the women behind the statistics and exposes how the U.S. government's Department of Health and Human Services has impacted Afghan lives, particularly in terms of the devastating epidemic of maternal mortality.
