Nich Woolf

A SOMERSET paramedic has returned home after providing life-saving emergency training to hospital staff in Afghanistan and admitted his shock at what they face on a daily basis.

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Nich Woolf, aged 58, helped doctors and nurses in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, which has since been hit by a suicide bombing on December 6, leaving four people dead and a further 27 injured.

He said: “It was interesting that while the signs and symptoms of a heart attack were unknown to them, maintaining the airway of a patient with gunshot wounds was second nature – and it illustrates their daily working lives in Afghanistan at the moment.”

Mr Woolf, from Burnham, said he was confronted with more difficulties then he could ever have imagined.

Some of the equipment he brought over from England was confiscated by custom officials, such as alcohol-cleansing wipes because of the Muslim country’s strict religious beliefs.

But Mr Woolf, who works for the Welsh Ambulance Service, was financially backed by the Festival Medical Services and the Sandy Gall Afghanistan Appeal, to help provide vital support to trainee doctors.

He said: “Our objective in Mazar was to ensure that the public hospital facilities were safe and the staff adequately trained for effective operations to be carried out in emergency situations.

“I taught sessions on resuscitation for about 50 surgeons, doctors, nurses and anaesthetists.

“There is no doubt that the work of the Sandy Gall Afghanistan Appeal is changing lives and that the training and equipment we took was vitally needed and gratefully received.”

He said his thoughts were with those caught up in last week’s ‘bombing atrocity’ but knew his former colleagues in Mazar would have done everything they could to help save lives.