Afghanistan: Pressure grows on hospitals, as pediatric patient numbers rise | Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF ...

Afghanistan: Pressure grows on hospitals, as pediatric patient numbers rise | Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF ...

The sound of crying and beeping medical devices fills the small room. Nurses rush from bed to bed, checking vital signs. Mothers push oxygen masks onto the faces of their children.  The emergency room (ER) doctor bursts through the swinging doors of the pediatric ER in Boost hospital in Helmand.  “I have 17 patients waiting to be admitted, but nowhere to put them,” says Ahmed*, an MSF ER doctor.  It’s 6 p.m. and the night shift has only just beg…