Najibullah’s little brother, Hamidullah, was killed by Taliban rocket on August 20, as they balanced on a bicycle, on their way to vote in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand.

Photographer Jeremy Kelly and I were less than 200ft away when the rocket hit. We thought Najibullah was unscathed. He stood screaming next to his brother’s body as medics heaved it into an ambulance. But when we met him the next day, we discovered one side of his body was lacerated with shrapnel and there was a piece of metal lodged inside his left eye.

With his uncle, Akhtar Mohammed, Najibullah braved Afghanistan’s most dangerous road to visit doctors in Kabul, but medics at city’s Eye Hospital said they couldn’t operate. Hamidullah was going blind. In desperation, Akhtar Mohammed, made plans to drive through the Khyber Pass to Pakistan, to get help abroad.

We brought his plight to the attention of Britain’s military attache in Kabul, Colonel Simon Diggins and the deputy commander of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force, General Jim Dutton. Within hours they’d cut through the Nato bureaucracy and arranged for a British military convoy to escort Najibullah on to the biggest base in Kabul, where medics at the French Nato hospital took over.

In these pictures Opthamologist Bernard Swalduz examines Najibullah’s eye, which has a “foreign body” embedded in its lens.

Najibullah is staying in the hospital, dosed up on intravenous antibiotics and eye drops, waiting for the surgeons to operate. A massive thank you to everyone who’s helped.