In 1987, during the Russian War with Afghanistan, I spent my 3 month medical student elective doing Obstetrics in the tribal areas of The North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. I returned the following year with a team of British surgeons who gave up their holidays every year to operate on the war wounded from Afghanistan. They sent me to run clinics from a Mujahideen camp on the border with Afghanistan.

I returned to Afghanistan in 2001 when it was in the grip of the Taliban regime and found a country devastated by 23 years of war. I saw no hope for the people there. All of the infrastructure had been destroyed, villages had been razed to the ground and millions had fled across the borders as refugees.  Millions more were in camps for internally displaced persons, where there was no running water, sanitation, proper food and shelter or medical aid. The schools and hospitals had been destroyed.

When I returned home, I decided to set up Afghan Connection, in the hope that even if we could change one life for the better, our work would be worthwhile.

How does it work? 
The Charity is run by me and advised by Trustees and Patrons who are experts in the fields of medicine, business, education and journalism.  We incur minimum administrative costs and 96% of the funds we raise are spent on our projects.

Now in our sixth year as a Registered Charity, we are starting work on our 22nd school construction and have funding for 10 more schools this year. These schools serve 26,000 children.

Together with The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, (SCA) with whom we work closely, we have equipped these schools with desks and benches, libraries, science laboratories, computer rooms and sports equipment. School children from all around are coming to use these resources. All our schools are in rural areas receiving very little aid and they have brought real hope to these isolated communities. The SCA provide salaries for our teachers, stationery and teacher training.

We also run a twin school project with SCA, partly funded by a grant from the European Union, linking together 90 schools in Afghanistan, Sweden and the UK. AC has just included Eton College in our linking programme, making 19 twin schools so far. This involves over 25,000 children in the UK and Afghanistan alone and includes schools from the state, private and special needs sectors.

In health projects, we have refurbished and equipped wards at hospitals in Kabul and Kunduz - including the only Paediatric Hospital in Afghanistan, and provided Obstetric and Paediatric expatriate consultants to give medical training. We recently provided 16 vaccine refrigerators to Merlin, a medical NGO. (Non-Government Organisation) These will take part in a project to vaccinate 72,000 people a year.

See our Health and Construction pages to find out more about our current projects.