Boy Survives a Skull Stabbing with a 3 in (7.5 cm) Long Knife

You could have not imagined a human surviving the thrust of a knife in the head. Especially in the case of a 10-year-old child. But BBC News has reported this odd case from Afghanistan.

Major Stephen Gallacher, a Territorial Army medical officer from Caernarfon in Gwynedd, saved the life of a 10-year-old Afghan boy who had a three-inch (7.5 cm) knife stuck in his head. Gallacher, father-of-four, worked in the 208 Field Hospital in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, and he thought the boy could not survive to such a horrendous wound.

The boy had been stabbed while interfering between his father and an angry customer in his shop in Kandahar. The customer aimed to stab the boy's father, and thrust the knife into the boy's skull, behind his eye and in front of his brain (luckily). His father carried him to a military base in Kandahar, from where the boy was flown to Camp Bastion where Gallacher was based.

"The father was very quiet and calm and the whole situation was very surreal, because if the same thing had happened in Bangor the whole family would be here with a lot of crying. When the child was discharged later there was no police involvement either, the village elders were going to deal with it. It was really weird," said Gallacher.

"Life in Afghanistan was an eye-opener as the country has no hospitals and the army was only able to provide 'life, limb and eyesight' treatment. In Bangor I'd wait 20 to 30 minutes for a series of trauma x-rays, but in the field they used digital x-rays which give us the results in minutes which means decisions can be made quickly," he added.

Gallacher received two campaign medals and a long-service medal for his activity in the Afghan mission.