Since 2006, Smile Train has partnered with our hospital in Kabul to offer free cleft surgery to children and families who have nowhere else to turn. To date, that partnership has made possible more than 15,224 surgeries, along with the training of Afghan plastic surgeons and the development of nutritional and speech therapy programs for cleft patients. It is one of the most enduring and impactful programs our hospital runs.
Hedayatullah’s story is one of those 15,224.
He was born with arhinia, the congenital absence of a nose. It is an extraordinarily rare condition. The first days of life required careful, skilled resuscitation. Growing up brought daily challenges: difficulty eating, difficulty breathing, and the quiet weight of being stared at and avoided. For fifteen years, Hedayatullah and his family carried this.
Then he came to our hospital in Kabul.
His surgeon, Dr. Hashimi, approached the case with the same careful attentiveness the Afghan surgical team brings to every complex procedure. The condition was unlike anything he had encountered directly. He consulted colleagues across Afghanistan and internationally, and made a considered decision: he would address both the appearance and the function – not one or the other. Over six months and three staged operations, performed entirely free of charge, Dr. Hashimi created a nose for Hedayatullah.
What changed is not only visible. Hedayatullah has plans now. He wants to study, to finish school, to become a doctor himself. He wants to help people the way his care team helped him.
There is a particular kind of joy that belongs to a story like this one: not dramatic, not sudden, but steady. A young man who once covered his face walks forward now with his head up. The work that made that possible has been happening at our hospital in Kabul for nearly two decades, one patient at a time.