With his long black hair flowing under a traditional cap and over his masked face, a Taliban guard, machine gun in hand, signaled for the doctor to follow.
I then realized that we would have their company during our stay.
A peculiar development and an unusual experience, but one that had to be overshadowed by what we were about to see in the heart of Afghanistanthe biggest and best children’s hospital in the center of the capital Kabul.
“We have a lot of rooms that I have to show you around,” said Muhammad Iqbal, the chief medical officer at Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital, as he led me down a flight of stairs.
“The first wards are intensive care and intensive care, follow me.”
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“We have a lot of neighborhoods that I have to show you,” Muhammad Iqbal told Sky News
We entered through the corridors that led to the neighborhoods, groups of women – mothers – immediately covered their faces, stood aside or looked for a place to stand out.
I could hear the children crying from the corridor and as I looked out the windows of the rooms, I was amazed at the number of people being cared for.
The room was not only full, it was bursting. Cribs designed for one child had two or three pushed together.
Doctors and nurses roamed the room, checking vital signs and trying to soothe crying babies.
I’ve seen such poor medical facilities in 20 years of reporting from Afghanistan, I supposed I couldn’t be surprised. In the country’s provinces, basic medical care has been the norm for decades.
It wasn’t the condition the children were kept in, it wasn’t really the number of children, many desperately ill, but the fact that this was happening in the best state hospital in the whole country.
Worse, it was the testimony of doctor after doctor that they cannot keep children with treatable diseases alive because even here they do not have enough medicine, supplies or equipment to properly care for their patients.
Afghanistan is in the midst of a medical crisis that is worsening by the day, exacerbated by an economy in freefall, the freezing of the country’s assets and the drying up of hundreds of millions of dollars in aid that flowed here for two decades , because the Taliban has taken control.
The Indira Gandhi Hospital is a testament to this.
There are more than 500 patients being treated in this hospital – they have room for 300.
The hospital almost closed last winter, but an injection of aid from the International Committee of the Red Cross provided much-needed immediate help and resources, but nowhere near enough.
Room after room is the same, full of very sick babies and children.
“Eighty percent of middle-class families used to go to private hospitals for treatment, now they came here, they can’t afford to go anywhere else,” Dr Muhammad Iqbal told me.
“There is a need for good medicines that you don’t buy outside a hospital, that’s the problem, our people are very poor.
“There is a need for ventilators, we don’t have ventilators, CPAP machines, and that’s a lot [big] need for an ICU”.
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Dr. Salahuddin with his three children, Baheer, Mehrama and Sahar
In a cradle, three children, Baheer, Mehrama and Sahar. All have cerebral palsy, along with other medical complications.
“This is CP, this is CP, this is CP… three of them CP, cerebral palsy,” explained their doctor pointing to each of their nearly lifeless bodies.
“It’s serious,” adds Dr. Salahuddin.
Their chances of survival are low, there is no treatment for cerebral palsy available in Afghanistan.
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Muslimah, 16, and her brother Mansoor Ahmad
Aziz Ullah struggles to get his 16-year-old daughter Muslimah out of her wheelchair and put her next to her one-year-old brother.
They sought help and medical treatment in two other provinces, Zabul and Kandahar, before coming here.
Both children have a genetic kidney disease.
“I’m worried about her,” Aziz tells me in a soft voice.
“The doctors told me that the disease recently developed in her, this is my fourth child with this disease.”
With two of her children already dead, Muslimah and her brother Mansoor Ahmad’s chances of survival are already slim.
“The opportunity to [survival] it’s too low, I mean 80 percent chance of dying,” explained Dr. Sharif Ahmed Azizi.
“We can’t do anything, no, because we don’t have any facilities for these patients.
“For poor patients we don’t have good resources for patients, because on the one hand we have more patients. I mean the patient load is too high, from all sides of Afghanistan patients come here and the facilities . too low.”
I asked her how she felt coming to work every day knowing that there is little they can do for children like Muslimah.
“Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do for these patients, for these types of patients … there’s no other way.”
Many of the children in care have serious illnesses that could be successfully treated.
Looking from her hospital bed into the distance, with her mother sitting next to her, 12-year-old Amina has cerebral meningitis.
They are fighting to keep her alive. It’s not a lack of skill here, it’s a lack of resources.
The hospital was spotless, and everywhere we looked it was clear that the doctors, nurses and hospital staff were very dedicated.
But without the basic resources it needs, it is on its knees.
At one point we were separated from Dr. Iqbal, I went to see if he had been called to his office. I asked one of the staff if the senior doctor was there. After a few moments, he motioned for me to follow him into another office.
Inside were two men with long beards and black turbans, clearly hard Taliban, sitting and talking.
I apologized for intruding and said I was looking for the senior doctor and was ready to leave.
“I’m a doctor, in fact I’m a specialist surgeon, and I’m in charge here,” said one of the men in perfect English.
“Welcome.”
Never make any assumptions in Afghanistan, I reminded myself.
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Dr. Muhammad Haseeb Wardak is the chairman of the hospital
Dr. Muhammad Haseeb Wardak is the chairman of the hospital.
He agreed to a quick interview and I asked him if they needed international money to help with the hospital’s problems.
“We are asking the international community to increase its support and to continue that support,” he told me.
“They (the United States) should unfreeze our money, that’s our hope, our demand.”
“This hospital has been here for 50 years and we want more facilities in the hospital, and we need more staff and equipment, to be able to treat patients who come here from all over Afghanistan,” he added.
The impasse between the Taliban and the international community over human rights, particularly women’s rights, remains a major sticking point. And it is at the root of many of the country’s problems.
As we walked through the hospital corridors, a woman grabbed us. She wanted help buying infant formula for her seven-month-old daughter, Fatima.
Wearing the traditional blue Afghan burka, she looked directly at me and asked for help.
This is unusual in Afghanistan today: for a woman to engage so directly with a man, especially one accompanied by an armed Taliban guard, in a public place.
It shows how desperate she is.
Malnutrition across Afghanistan is out of control. This hospital has had to expand its malnutrition ward to serve more and more young patients.
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Safiya is severely underweight
Those most affected come here from all over the country, if they can.
Seven-year-old Safiya has just arrived with her family. They have traveled from Paktia province, about a six-hour drive from Kabul.
Safiya is severely underweight. He has a skeletal face, struggles to sit up in the hospital bed.
But for the first time in weeks, the family has hope. His condition improves after a day here.
“I have hope,” his mother told me. “She is already much better than before we arrived.”
But for many other parents in the malnutrition ward, there is nothing but despair.
With her mother crying at her bedside, little two-year-old Shereen Khan lies motionless by her side. He has what appeared to be ulcers on his back and tubes attached to his nose.
His mother Gulbashra, a cleaner in Helmand province, is terribly poor.
Through tears, she explains that her youngest son, her only child, started to get sick four months ago, but she had to leave him at home to go to work.
Shereen Khan deteriorated and is constantly keeping vigil by her bedside, hoping that she will pull through.
Like so many in Afghanistan, Gulbashra doesn’t care who’s to blame: she just wants her son to live.