Day 317: On Their Own

As an Embedded Training Team (ETT) member, my overarching goal is to get my Afghan medical counterparts to perform their responsibilities on their own. The US presence here in Afghanistan has created an overdependence on our weapons, expertise, and money which we as ETT members have tried to minimize. If I had to objectively measure any kind of success during my time here, it would be in terms of what my Afghan medical counterparts have been able to achieve or implement on their own such as conducting of first aid classes for non-medical personnel, staging vaccination clinics, producing a mass casualty plan, adhering to an ongoing training schedule, and so on and so forth. In the last week, I have been able to see the progress that my Afghan mentees have been able to achieve.


We have shown them how to conduct an efficient and safe vaccination clinic following all universal precautions such as clean technique, gloves, and utilization of sharps containers.





And as you can see, the vaccinations were prepared and administered by the Afghan medics only. I purposely left my US medics out of this one and allowed myself to simply take pictures and make sure that they were not throwing their needles into the regular trash...they still needed a little coaching on that part though.


The other success story was watching their ability to teach a basic first aid class to soldiers without any medical background.


As you can here, First Sergeant Mujahid and Corporal Gul Rahman, 2 of my hard-working Afghan medics have the class under control. Way to go gentleman! My work is done...at least part way.