CAMP SHIRZAI, Afghanistan - Using the Islamic calendar, it's 1426 in Afghanistan, the number of years since Mohammed's emigration to Medina in AD 622. Medically speaking, it's more like 1935.
After 30 years of warfare and centuries of bloodshed, Afghanistan is trying to start with a clean slate. Its new democratic government and Afghan National Army are only three years old.
Like any toddler, there are growing pains. Canadian troops, through the Operational Mentoring Liason Team (OMLT), have been working with the ANA trying to refine their military capabilities.
The medical facilities at the ANA compound at Camp Shirzai are under the watchful and sometimes disbelieving eyes of the U.S. military.
"It's hard, because every day I wake up it feels like `Groundhogs Day,''' said U.S. air force Maj. Brenda Frye, who is overseeing the clinic. (In the Bill Murray film comedy "Groundhog Day,'' his character awakens to an unsettling day-to-day sameness.)
"It took us a month at least to get them to mop the floors every day, to make them understand it had to be clean in here,'' Frye said.
"Because of a cultural issue I think that's where we've run into problems. You feel like you want to walk right in and start teaching them things about medicine. They say they know how to do things, but when you watch them you're not certain they really know how to do it. So you go back to the basics,'' Frye added.
This clinic takes care of the day-to-day needs of members of the Afghan National Army and local residents. But the same medical problems that are prevalent in the war-torn southern half of Afghanistan are also present here.
As in many civilian hospitals, there's a serious shortage of doctors and assistants.
"We are still faced with a big problem with medical-section personnel even after we requested to the government in Kabul for doctors,'' said Col. Abdul Basir, the surgeon for the ANA's 205 Corp, overlooking medical care in four southern provinces.
The unit has about half the doctors it requires and is having to make up the difference with help from U.S., Canadian and Dutch forces.
According to Basir, physicians in the relatively stable environment in Kabul aren't willing to come to Kandahar or nearby Helmand province, where there is always a threat of suicide bombers or landmines. "They are afraid to live here.''
Wearing the uniform of the ANA, mortal enemies of the Taliban, doesn't help either.
Whereas doctors working at civilian hospitals are safe, those working for the ANA are as much a target as any member of the coalition forces.
Frye said there have been improvements since her arrival but change creeps along in this country. Doing things differently takes a long time.
"They treat everyone who comes in with some sort of pills and normally everyone who comes in will get four or five prescriptions -- that's just the way it works,'' said Frye, a physician's assistant. "They want the patient to feel they've walked away with something.''
The Afghan system is decades behind that of North America's, she said -- so far behind, in fact, that it is difficult to even put a date to it.
"Obviously the whole time I've been alive, medicine has been very good in the States and Canada. We know a very sophisticated medical system,'' Frye said. pausing for a moment.
"I would put us (the clinic) at least in the first half of the 1900s. Maybe in the 1930s or '40s.''
There is a definite shortage of medical personnel, especially doctors, Frye confirmed. Part of the problem is there is nothing to compel a doctor in the ANA to leave the safe confines of Kabul to move south.
Dr. Abdul Rahman, who is in charge of the garrison clinic, said Afghan medicine has a long way to go.
"We have had a lot of corrections in the last two-and-a-half decades in Afghanistan. We have a lot of problems in every section,'' Rahman said.
"We were completely corrupted. It's getting better day by day but there is still a lot of corruption in our country. It's like we are not able to improve like other countries can,'' he added.
Frye has been part of humanitarian outreach missions to some of the villages and has seen first-hand just how far the country has to go.
"You'll see kids that have had polio. It's hard to test for some of the things that you think you see out there, like possibly typhoid or malaria. We probably see it but we don't have a way of testing for it,'' said Frye. "We go out to help these people but it's difficult if you can't have continuing health care.''
She won't be around to see a reform of the Afghan medical system. Frye heads home next month and will retire from the U.S. air force, but remains hopeful.
"I think its possible, but I think it's going to take a very long time.''
