Bob Weidmann

Midland College's Director of Respiratory Care, Bob Weidmann, took the most important things he had to give the citizens of Kabul, Afghanistan and left them all behind when he returned. He shared everything he knew about respiratory care, and how the doctors and nurses of the 210-bed Wazir Akbar Khan hospital should use their first-ever ventilators.

But, Weidmann brought back home so much more than he ever imagined—an entirely new view on his own country. "We have so much here. We take so much for granted, but we don't realize that we are the exception compared to people around the world," he said. "You just can't imagine, until you see how poor some of these people are," he continued, "... it is a place of such contrasts as well. I saw mud houses with satellite dishes."

The discrepancies were apparent in their healthcare, as well. Weidmann was in Kabul to train doctors and nurses to use post-operative care equipment we've had in the United States for years. The hospital where Weidmann worked for two weeks was making history, with the first four ventilators to be used in a nonmilitary hospital in Afghanistan. He also helped the staff with another first: he taught them how to perform and analyze an arterial blood gas test, so they could understand how to adjust the oxygen levels on the ventilators for their patients.

Those patients, however, were separated by gender: men were in one ICU, women in another. Women are also not allowed to care for men at the hospital. "Women are property there," Weidmann said. "They have to keep their heads covered and they must walk behind their husbands on the street," he continued. There might be more than one wife walking behind that husband, since polygamy is legal in Afghanistan, allowing every man up to four wives.

Weidmann did not find the language barrier to be too much of a hindrance, "... most of the doctors spoke English well enough," he said. But, there was a translator present during most of the training to assist with the very specialized language of medicine. So, when he left Kabul, he gave the hospital staff his email address and other contact information and told them to stay in touch with him if they had any questions. He must have done a great job training them, because he hasn't heard from them yet.