10 minutes of medical mother-child care in Afghanistan

As early as 2021, after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, the WHO feared that the country's health system was on the verge of collapse (dpa 2021). Some clinics had to close even then (ibid.). Today, the situation looks even more difficult, especially in rural Afghanistan. It has become almost impossible not only for Nazifa, but for many hundreds of thousands of families in rural areas to find quick medical help in emergencies. At the same time, hunger is rampant. According to a survey by the World Food Program, 92 percent of all families in Afghanistan say they can no longer feed their children adequately (World Food Program, Afghanistan, 2023). Every second child shows signs of malnutrition or undernourishment (UNICEF 2023). Iman is also a little too small and much too thin for her age. It's a good thing that the doctor in Qulab packed her a month's ration of nutritional supplements. Every day she is to receive a small package with the most important nutrients and building materials so that she can regain her strength and grow. The project runs seven mother-child clinics like the one in Qulab in particularly remote regions of Kabul Province. Every morning, up to a hundred mothers and children line up outside each clinic waiting for treatment. Each clinic employs a medical team of ten people. Half of them are women. In rural Afghanistan, girls may only be treated by women and boys by men. The medical field is therefore excluded from the country's ban on women working. Midwife Zainab is very relieved about this. "There is so much to do here," she says. Easily treatable illnesses such as pneumonia, diarrhea and pregnancy complications can quickly become life-threatening for mothers and children here in the countryside. Every hand is therefore urgently needed. The councils of elders in the surrounding villages, who support and protect the project clinic and its employees, also know this.