When Waheed Arian arrived in the UK as a teenager from war-torn Afghanistan in the 1990s, he was told he should set his sights on becoming a cab driver – many years later, he set his ambitions a bit higher by earning a medical degree at the University of Cambridge and went on to become a radiology specialist registrar in Liverpool. “My ambition has always been to become a doctor,” he says. “First for my family and then to serve Afghanistan and warzones, because there are so many people suffering and they don’t have much help.”
Motivated by love for his home-country, Dr. Arian came up with an endeavor called Teleheal where British doctors are able to council Kabul colleagues via Skype on medical emergencies, traumas, and accidents. Dr Sumita Chawla, from Aintree University Hospital, comments, “We have got to understand the facilities that we have are not available to hospitals in Afghanistan. So when we give advice we have got to tailor it according to the needs of the patient… and also the facilities that are there.”
“Afghan doctors are being updated on latest emergency and trauma guidelines,” says Dr Mamosai Zewar, head of emergency and intensive care in Afghanistan. “This co-operation has the potential to save thousands of more lives in the future… especially with the scarcity of medical and surgical expertise.”
