N.Z. doctor tells of continuing war tragedy

Press, 7 August 1985, Page 20

N.Z. doctor tells of continuing war tragedy

PA Wellington Afghanistan and Kampuchea may have faded from the newspaper headlines but the human tragedy of those conflicts is continuing, says New Zealand doctor, lan McPherson. Dr McPherson has just returned home after almost three years working for the Red Cross in Pakistan and Thailand. In October, 1982, he went to Peshawar, a Pakistan town 50km from the Afghan border that has become a 'base for international aid activities in the area. After five months he became medical co-ordinator at a Red Cross hospital for war wounded, supervising

about eight foreign doctors and organising vital medical supplies. Fifteen months later he went to Thailand for a similar position at a hospital in Aranya Prathet, 6km from the Kampuchean border. His wife and four children accompanied him to both places, and the family returned to New Zealand last week, bound for Thames where Dr McPherson will resume general practice. In Wellington, Dr McPherson said the work in both Thailand and Pakistan was very demanding and depressing for Red Cross staff. Most doctors did only a three-months stint. “You are patching up

otherwise healthy young people, and some of them are returning later with another war wound," he said. Many of the wounded Afghan rebels had to travel for weeks across enemy territory, usually along disused roads at night, on the backs of camels or donkeys. When they reached the border they were taken by ambulance to Peshawar or another Red Cross hospital 1200 km to the south. Because the rebels took so long to get medical aid, their wounds were invariably infected, and took a lot longer to heal, he said. The situation had become more serious along the Thai-Kampuchean border

after the Vietnamese forces pushed hundreds of thousands of refugees deep into Thailand during an offensive earlier this year. Thailand’s official policy was that the refugees could stay only temporarily, but it was hard to see how they could return to Kampuchea safely, said Dr McPherson. He had not really feared for his family’s safety during their stay, although at one stage in Thailand their house had been shaken at night by shellfire. His wife, Rosemary, was a teacher and the two of their four children who were of school age had studied by correspondence.