The Camp Bastion hospital is a glimmering oasis in the middle of a vast, dusty plain.

The shiny, extremely clean building could be a ward in any hospital in any western country, it has state of the art medical equipment and lives that would ordinary be lost in UK hospitals are fought for tooth and nail with a very high success rate.

Today I was allowed to visit the field hospital and speak to some of the front line medical staff treating injured coalition, Afghan national and even Taliban soldiers.

The staff at the hospital work around the clock to treat injured personnel from the base, those brought in by Medical Emergency Response Team (Mert) helicopters, those that fall ill at the base and Afghan nationals caught in the crossfire.

The capability of the hospital has been extended with the additional US forces and although it has alleviated some problems, with the added influx of 10,000 US soldiers, the staff are still pushed to the limit.

At 3am the previous night it was all hands on deck after five casualties were brought in from an operation somewhere in Helmand Province.

Blood stock levels are kept constantly high here, sometimes more than ten times that of an ordinary hospital in the UK.

Surprisingly, despite its location and the sometimes horrific cases that are flung through its doors, patients never get infections and MRSA is something they only read about in week-old UK newspapers.

The centre even has its own Apheresis machine that removes the platelets from blood so they always have a high stock of anti-coagulants.

In the ward the UK and US nurses and doctors are constantly hard at work treating patients that are brought in for anything from gunshot wounds and IED related injuries, to sprains, heatstroke and diarrhoea.

Such care is taken over everyone that comes through its doors even the Taliban fighters brought in are looked after as if they were any other patient.

Major Kathryn Rickers, a midwife at a hospital in the Midlands and the commanding officer on the ward, said: “We don't know who they are and we don't care who they are.

“We give the same level of treatment to everyone regardless of what we think about them.

"We're nurses and we have to nurse, that's what we do.

“We have to be very careful though, when we treat the locals, not to give them things to take away with them that might identify where they have been.

“If the Taliban were to get hold of them, or discover where they had been they would kill them without a thought.”

A senior Army source commented: “We sometimes have to dress the locals down and they actually ask us to do so because the Taliban are often fully entrenched in villages and if the locals return with the clothing we have given them, they will be murdered, even the children.”

The hospital is a prime example of the vast amount of money being pumped into patient care. Within hours injured soldiers are treated and on a ward awaiting a plane back to England.

Cargo planes are often diverted at a moments notice so the patients can make a safe journey back to the UK as soon as possible.

Patients are met in Khandahar, the country's main transport hub for coalition forces, by Critical Care Air Support Teams (CCAST) who fly out from the UK to treat patients on their way back home.

Everyone at the hospital had a high level of compassion and care for the wounded brought in but with the high turn around rate, a testament to the skill and hard work of the staff, they are never able to get attached to their patients, apart from one.

A little girl was brought in with her mother and father after they were caught in the crossfire of a fierce gun battle between coalition and Taliban forces.

Hamdia, the 14-month-old baby was shot in the foot and her pregnant mother through the chest.

Her mother, then 20 weeks pregnant, was rushed into the operating theatre after surgeons feared she could lose the baby.

Young Hamdia was taken into the recovery ward with her distraught father who kept a bedside vigil throughout her whole time there.

One night when the little girl was drowsy from her pain killers, her father was overheard by nurses sobbing.

When they went to see why, he was softly shaking the little girl who was laying lifeless on her hospital bed, he thought she was dead.

The nurses reassured the father as best as they could and managed to wake up the little girl.

Corporal Nick Drinkwater said: “The ward certainly was very quiet when they left.

“You had massive, hardened soldiers coming in and melting at the sight of her sitting there injured.

"The team kept them there for 10 days because they wanted to make sure that the mother and the unborn child were OK but we also wanted to make sure the family was kept together as a unit rather than being broken up and sent off on their own."

Corporal Rebecca Warren, another nurse who treated Hamdia said: “You here stories out here about the way men treat the women out here but every time the father left her sight she would start crying.

“It was only when he returned that she would stop.

“He was also terrified about losing his wife and their unborn child and was constantly asking if she was ok.”

• For more from our reporter Harry Miller in Afghanistan, click here