Hero therapist gives hope to Afghan disabled
Posted: Thursday, December 25, 2008 1:00 AM
Filed Under:
Kabul, Afghanistan
By Carol Grisanti, NBC News Producer
KABUL, Afghanistan – Alberto Cairo describes himself as moody, temperamental, impatient and pushy. But to the disabled patients he has treated for 19 years at the Red Cross Rehabilitation Center – most of them victims of violence in this war-torn country – he is an angel of mercy.
"If you see someone coming here depressed, and you see if after a few minutes he’s a little less depressed, and then after a few days he’s even better, and then he starts smiling again – that’s a huge reward," Cairo said. "What can you expect, more than that?" he asked.
In a back corner of the Red Cross center’s male ward, 12-year-old Mohammed smiled broadly as Cairo walked over to him. Mohammed was sitting with his younger brother, Ahmad, on the edge of a cot. His one good foot, shod in a torn shoe, dangled down.
"Look at him," Cairo said to me. "Sometimes he uses his prostheses and sometimes he doesn’t. He’s a naughty boy, but no one at home is really taking care of him," he said.
The lanky Cairo inspected the stump of Mohammed’s amputated leg and affectionately ruffled his younger brother’s hair before moving on through the ward, dashing in and out of the center’s therapy rooms in his mid-length Red Cross smock.
The gray-haired Italian lawyer turned physiotherapist, teased and scolded the male patients in fluent Dari, their native language. He hugged the kids and then bicycled over to the female area to chat with the women. Cairo, 51, seemed to be everywhere at once, the driving force at the clinic, which is the largest orthopedic center in the world for disabled persons.
‘A place of hope’
"When you lose your leg, you don’t only lose your leg, you lose your heart, your mind, you feel nothing," he said.
It was not in Cairo’s plan to come to Afghanistan. He was hired by the Red Cross to go to Africa but then two weeks before his departure, they told him it would not be Africa, but Afghanistan instead. He was so surprised, he recalled, that he thought of only one question to ask: What would the weather be like so he would know how to pack? That was 19 years ago.
"It’s very rewarding, this work," Cairo said. "If I give something, I get back so much that I’m the one who gets a lot from them," he said.
 |
| Carol Grisanti / NBC News |
| Alberto Cairo, right, meets with patients at the Red Cross Rehabilitation Center in Kabul. |
Cairo has kept the clinic up and running through half a dozen Afghan governments – from the communists to warring warlords to the Taliban. Unfortunately the near constant warfare in Afghanistan since the Soviets invaded in 1980 has left a diverse pool of patients in need of prostheses.
"When they come to us they are patients – sometimes with big turbans or military uniforms or long beards – but they are patients," he said.
At this sprawling center in the heart of Kabul, I marveled as the men, women and children – struggling to walk on prostheses or hobbling about on crutches – still managed to smile. I was amazed to see disabled employees push amputees in wheelchairs and acknowledge me with a big grin and a warm "hello." Even the clinic’s mascot, a black male dog named Susie, extended his left paw in greeting while gracefully balancing on his two remaining good legs.
The goal: social reintegration
"It’s a place where people start again," Cairo told me. "It’s difficult with a lot of problems, but it’s a place of hope," he said. "That’s what I wish to communicate to everybody."
But, Cairo insisted, physical rehabilitation alone is not enough. The final aim is social reintegration: to help the disabled feel alive again with education, trade skills and a job.
"It’s very important to put them back into society with a role. You can give all the legs you want, if you don’t do this it’s nothing," he said. "That’s the way to give them dignity."
Cairo wanted the center to be an example, so he created jobs. Ninety-nine percent of the 320 employees at the center are disabled, working as therapists and clerks helping more than 300 patients who come in everday for treatment or as craftsmen making artificial limbs, wheelchairs and crutches.
It’s a form of "positive discrimination," says Cairo. "It’s a center of disabled people working for disabled people," he said.
Patients turned craftsmen
In a workroom next to the garden, 46-year-old Abdul Wahab was screwing the foot of an artificial leg onto the rest of the prostheses. His bench was cluttered with tools and prostheses parts; one artificial leg, already finished, had a sneaker and gray sock fitted and attached.
Wahab, a former soldier in the Afghan army, lost his leg in a landmine accident 15 years ago during the Afghan civil war. He came to the clinic for treatment and afterwards Cairo arranged for vocational training and a job. He said he feels almost normal now and owes everything to Cairo.
At the center, the former patients turned craftsmen produce 15,000 artificial legs a year. Others have learned to make copies of western-designed wheelchairs; to import a wheelchair would cost $500, but a homemade Afghan one costs $150 as well as providing jobs and teaching a trade.
"Maybe in the future we can even export," Cairo said. "Who knows; this is the next step," he added.
 |
| Carol Grisanti / NBC News |
| Patients at the Red Cross Rehabilitation Center in Kabul, Afghanistan. |
Cairo sees even further benefits. His current pet project is to advance micro-credit loans of up to $600 to patients who are interested in starting a small business of their own. The results have been good, Cairo explained that 6,000 people have been able to take advantage of the Red Cross financing program in Kabul alone.
"I go to see them in the bazaar," he said. "Now they are sitting beside the desk or inside a shop and they are businessmen. It’s dignity again."
"The happiness is huge, huge, huge," he added.
"There is so much to do. It would be criminal – it would be selfish – to leave. I want to stay," he said.
