KANDAHAR AIR BASE — Hadiro Akbar wears an oversize grey T-shirt and navy blue athletic shorts, clothes for comfort, but they make her look tiny as she sits in a recovery ward of the Kandahar Airfield hospital.

She is the first Afghan woman I have met at the trauma hospital. In the 10 days CTV has been granted access to the multinational facility, most of the patients have been Afghan soldiers and police, some coalition forces, and children.

She is not in traditional dress and this surprises me a little, yet Hadiro hardly seems concerned. She has bigger worries, though she is stoic and her eyes are bright and confident.

Capt. Lisa Compton, a nurse from Newfoundland, stands behind Hadiro gently braiding her long black hair. Compton has helped take care of Hadiro since she was brought to the hospital three days earlier, in the late stages of pregnancy and terribly injured.

"We all wondered at one point, whether mom was going to make it," said Compton. "She was in the operating room for a long time and we were all saying, 'stay in there baby, stay in there, don't come out, we don't want you meet you just yet'."

A bomb struck Hadiro's home in the central province of Uruzgan in the middle of the night. She was thrown to the floor, shrapnel ripped through the lower part of her face and neck.

Her husband and six children were terrified but unhurt. Hadiro needed immediate medical help. She was airlifted to the hospital with her husband, the children left in the care of their grandmother.

Her surgery went well, though she will wear the scars of that night for the rest of her life.

Given that Hadiro is quite small, medical staff initially thought she was about seven months pregnant, but she surprised them all the next night.

Compton had decided not to go off shift and stay with Hadiro. Though they were worlds apart, the two women were becoming friends.

"Through an interpreter she told me her pain was a little bit different" said Compton. "I had thought it was her jaw and I asked her to tell me about her pain, and she said it was the same as her other six children!"

"So we had some good hand co-ordination and she was telling me, rubbing her belly when she was having a contraction -- and that is how we measured them."

"We made it through the night and then we had this little miracle baby ...we had one more patient, a nice healthy one, so it was wonderful"

When I spoke to Hadiro, she lifted her hand, counting on her fingers: the first night she was bombed, the second night she had surgery and the third night she had a baby.

In Pashto, she said, "I am a tough woman." I had no doubts. She also said as soon as she saw her newborn baby boy, she forgot how much her facial injury hurt.

Hers was the first baby born at the Canadian-run hospital, a rare event at a facility built and staffed to treat wounded soldiers. The impact of such an event was hard to ignore ... smiles on faces, soldiers with teddy bears, medical staff crowding around the baby's bed for a glimpse.

It is stark contrast to the bloodied and broken who come in on a daily basis.

Change of pace for Role 3

This is a battlefield hospital, or "Role 3" as it is called by the military staff, but roughly 100 of the 400 patients the hospital has seen in the last six months are civilians.

"The fact that we are able to help on a humanitarian level," says Role 3's commanding officer, Col. Colin MacKay, "gives us the strength to deal with the other hard cases."

The hospital has helped a lot of children, most injured by bombs and bullets.

Dr. Dave Puskas from Thunder Bay, Ont. is one of a handful of civilian surgeons working at Role 3.

"The damage to the pediatric population is enormous," he told me. "We just don't see gunshot wounds on children at home, and we see a couple a week here."

One of them is 10-year-old year old Amamullah Nabi. It's difficult to get the details surrounding his injuries. His father says he was shot by Afghan police, but there appears to have been no reason for the shooting. A senseless act, a young life changed forever.

Amamullah did not get medical care for two days. By the time he was brought to the base hospital, his leg was beyond saving and his kidneys were failing. He was near death.

His right leg had to be amputated at the hip. The hospital does not have a dialysis machine, so the medical staff put their heads together and rigged up a system for cleaning Amamullah's badly damaged kidneys.

It worked. Four weeks later he was able to go home with his father.

"He lost his leg," said his father, "but he still has his life, thanks to the doctors and nurses here."

A challenge for spinal surgeons

Jalil Dastageer, 13, is not a victim of bombs or bullets, but poverty and disease. A form of tuberculosis called Pott's Disease was destroying his spine.

Two of Jalil's vertebrae were disintegrating, his spine was twisting and literally falling forward, it was only a matter of time before he would be paralyzed or worse.

Doctors in Kandahar City told Jalil's father he had to go to Kabul for treatment, but the family couldn't afford it.

Jalil's plight came to the attention of Puskas, who happens to be one of Canada's finest spine surgeons.

"We had a meeting of specialists from the hospital and said is 'it something we should be doing'." The team then worked out a schedule to ensure backup was available when Jalil's surgery was underway, in case mass casualties came in.

The surgery required to repair Jalil's spine meant that one of only three operating rooms and team of specialists would be tied up for hours.

"It's certainly a complicated surgery," said Col. MacKay, "and one that we take very seriously moving forward with. "

MacKay and Puskas show an X-ray of Jalil's spine. The damage is plain to see, and there is a lot of infection around the crumbling vertabrae.

Puskas explains: "The bottom line is, the risk of not doing surgery were far higher than the risks of surgery. I thought he had a couple of months before he would have become paralyzed and in an environment like this, with uncontrolled tuberculosis, a paralyzed child would not have survived very long."

Special equipment had to be ordered from Canada. A battlefield hospital wouldn't typically have scoliosis reconstruction equipment. It was donated by Synthes, an international medical device company with offices in Canada.

Synthes, says Puskas, "didn't even blink an eye." The equipment arrived in three days instead of the nine days estimated, and at considerable cost to the company.

The operation took about seven hours, with Puskas working alongside general surgeon Dr. Vivian McAlister of London, Ont. and a team of nurses and other specialists.

It went extremely well, within four days of major surgery, Jalil was gingerly walking circles around the hospital with his father.

"It's a big morale booster," Puskas said. "It was challenging to our morale initially to see something that is correctable at home and not to be able to intervene."

"So it was great to see one child, instead of amputating their leg or doing something of that nature, we have given them better function."

Jalil's father said now his son will have a future, he will be a brave man, he will be shoulder to shoulder with him, working together and supporting their family.

Another healthy patient for Role 3, just like Hadiro Akbar's new baby son. He's cradled in her arms as a smiling Compton looks on.

"I will always come back and say, remember that night, that sometimes the good comes out of the bad and I will try to remember the miracle we had here."