Recently, young Nazifa Noor Ahmad, the child aged nine and born in Cha Bol Bol, a village around 80 km far from Herat, came back to Italy. She was cured of a severe form of Hodgkin´s disease in “S.Orsola-Malpighi” Hospital in Bologna, and for two years she underwent the treatment monitored by Italian Provincial Reconstruction Team in Herat. His return to Italy was necessary to be submitted to a series of medical examinations according to the protocol that she is following.
It was a morning in July 2008 when she was brought by her parents to Camp “Vianini”, home of PRT in Herat, to be examined by military doctors, who provide medical care to the city´s population on a daily basis. The girl had a big bulge on the under side of the chin. Doctors immediately suspected that could be something serious. In fact, after the first tests, she was diagnosed with a severe form of Hodgkin’s disease, in the third stage. Given the impossibility of providing her an adequate care in the country, the military of PRT, in cooperation with representatives from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs arranged the urgent transfer to Italy, while the health direction of “S.Orsola-Malpighi” Hospital gave its willingness to beging immediately the treatment in its pediatric oncology and hematology department.
In her 19 months stay in Bologna, Nazifa underwent a chemo-radiotherapy and a surgical re-evaluation that led to her total recovery.
She went back to Afghanistan last March, where she attended to health checkups every fortnight in the PRT infirmary, until last Friday, when she traveled again to Italy, along with her father.
“Nazifa is another example of how the ´Italian System´- condensed in full cooperation between the military component of the PRT and the Cooperation for Development has been engaged for years in Herat province to support the Afghan population and reconstruction and development of the country” said Colonel Emmanuel Aresu, Commander of PRT and 1st Alpini Artillery Regiment of Taurinese Brigade
Since the foundation of the PRT in Herat, the infirmary at Camp Vianini has provided medical assistance to more than 25,000 people needing treatment, with an average of 50 visits per day.
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