Life-saving miracles happen every day at Afghan hospital, author tells Ismaili Centre audience

The Chairman of the French Medical Institute for Children (FMIC), Hilling was speaking at a launch event for his book A Place of Miracles: The Story of a Children’s Hospital in Kabul and the People Whose Lives Have been Changed by It, held at the Ismaili Centre, Toronto.

 

“Why do I call it A Place of Miracles? Simply because [there are] things have been accomplished at FMIC that could never before be accomplished in Afghanistan,” he told the audience. Arising during a seemingly never-ending war, the French Medical Institute for Children was opened in 2006 as a four-way public-private partnership between the governments of Afghanistan and France, the Aga Khan Development Network and French NGO La Chaîne de l’Espoir.

 

Hilling recounted how FMIC was able to save the life of a premature newborn girl whose parents could not find another hospital willing to admit them; the story of a child who needed surgery for the life-threatening condition of esophageal atresia; and how FMIC surgeons were able to successfully separate conjoined twin sisters. He also explained that the hospital’s patient welfare programme helps absorb the high cost of these advanced procedures.

 

“It is an institution that I have come to deeply admire,” he said. “The people who are served by it, the people who — despite tragedy and hardship — have committed themselves to it, to me are heroes. And I felt their story deserved to be told.”

 

The evening was moderated by Dr Karima Velji, President of the Canadian Nurses Association, who introduced Lee Hilling, whose decades of experience includes his past role as Global Director of Aga Khan Hospitals in Africa, Pakistan and India.

 

Attendees included Dr Michael Apkon, CEO of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, as well as other executives and physicians. The event included a question and answer session and concluded with a book signing by the author.

 

Additional launch events for the book are due to be held in cities across Canada including Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa and at the Ismaili Centre in Vancouver.