A joint effort between soldiers with the Afghan National Police Mentor Team out of Forward Operating Base Wilderness and the FOB Salerno Combat Support Hospital saved the life of a 9-month-old Afghan girl from Paktya province.
A man from a nearby village asking for medical help for his granddaughter approached soldiers of Troop C, 1st Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, and the PMT during a mission in the Gerda Serai District in Afghanistan.
Medics informed him to bring the girl to their base and they would provide the medical care.
Three weeks later, the man brought his severely burned 9-month-old granddaughter to the base. Illinois National Guard medic, Sgt. Benjamin Sleaford and Sgt. Dylan McGee, both attached to Troop C, took the girl to the base aid station for evaluation.
“As we began examining her, we were shocked,” said Sleaford, a Geneseo native. “She had severe burns over most of her skin from the buttocks down to the soles of her feet. At first we thought she had third-degree burns and might lose toes or even her legs.”
The mother informed the soldiers that the little girl had rolled into a cooking fire and that she had taken the girl to an Afghan medical clinic near their home. Her burns had been soaked in iodine and a thin layer of gauze was wrapped around her feet.
The medics carefully began to cut the gauze and clothing out of the burns as they tried to clean up the wounds. They immediately sent photos of the wounds to the FOB Salerno Combat Support Hospital in Khostprovince for consultation.
“We cleaned and treated her as well as we could,” said Sleaford. “But we’re just an aid station, we don't really have the means to treat the kind of burns she had. She needed to go to a hospital.”
The soldiers on FOB Wilderness took to the little girl immediately and began gathering money, food, baby wipes and supplies to give the family to help care for the girl.
“She was in a lot of pain and the only real thing we had to give her was Children's Tylenol,” said McGee, a Louisville, Ill., native. “We tried to make her as comfortable as possible.”
Task Force Currahee headquarters was contacted and soon after the girl, her mother and her grandfather were moved to the hospital on FOB Salerno.
The staff at the hospital had already received photos of the girl's burns and immediately established a treatment regimen.
She received skin grafts to the bottom of her feet, and after a more thorough inspection, the doctors were relieved to find only second-degree burns. She received several baths and a thorough debridement, where the charred skin was removed or washed away.
After the girl was transported from FOB Wilderness to FOB Salerno, Spc. Jenna Seward, a medic with Company C, 801st Brigade Support Battalion, passed on updates and information to the Soldiers at FOB Wilderness on the little girl's condition.
A week after the girl was admitted, Sleaford and McGee stopped by FOB Salerno's hospital to check on her. They held her, talked to her attending doctors and nurses, and were greatly relieved that the burns were not as bad as they had originally believed.
The little girl, although doing well, will still need recovery time at the hospital, and then routine checkups will be scheduled for the girl at FOB Wilderness Aid Station.
Afghanistan —
