IT HAS been five years since US and NATO-backed troops in Afghanistan defeated the Taliban then ruling the country. The declared western aim was to deprive terrorists of bases from which to operate by installing a stable, democratic government. This required Afghans to become more prosperous and secure – and healthier. So how do things stand?
The availability and quality of healthcare has improved greatly since 2004, when health services were reorganised, says Peter Hansen of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He spoke to ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ from Kabul, where he is assessing health conditions for the Afghan government.
Constant fighting after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 left the country’s already rudimentary healthcare system in ruins. In 2001 life expectancy was only 43 years. A quarter of children died before their fifth birthday, and 30,000 children died each year from measles alone. There were 3 million cases of malaria a year, 50 times the number in the 1970s.
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Women fared worst under the Taliban. In Badakhshan province in the far north-east of the country, 65 out of every thousand mothers died giving birth, the highest rate ever recorded anywhere in the world. Women also accounted for two-thirds of TB cases.
Five years is not long enough to make a serious impact on figures like these, says Natasha Palmer of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, whose team is about to publish an assessment of the country’s healthcare. Nevertheless, aid agencies give the national health ministry high marks for trying. It has contracted the country’s basic healthcare to non-governmental organisations, bringing 77 per cent of the population within range of a clinic, a tenfold increase from 2001.
In 2004, 16 million children were vaccinated for measles – up from 11 million in 2002 – and 4.5 million children were treated for worms in the world’s biggest ever deworming campaign. Two-thirds of children were given polio vaccinations in 2005, while vaccination rates for diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus increased from 9 per cent in 2001 to 30 per cent this year.
Funds remain a problem, and in the southern and eastern areas gains already made are at risk as the government loses control to the Taliban. Lack of security is endangering the groups providing healthcare, a situation some say is made worse by US programmes that promised aid only to people who cooperate with American troops. Insurgents have retaliated by targeting aid workers, causing Médecins Sans Frontières to pull out in 2004 after five of its staff were shot dead.
