Islamabad: The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged the Taliban authorities to lift limitations on Afghan female care providers, so that they can travel without male guardians and help women gain access to medical care after a powerful earthquake that killed 2,200 people in East -Afghanistan.
“A very big problem is now the increasing scarcity of female employees in these places,” said Dr. Mukta Sharma, Deputy representative of the Afghanistan office, in comments for Reuters.
She noted that about 90% of the medical staff in the affected region are men, while the remaining women are usually midwives and nurses rather than doctors who are able to treat serious injuries. This, she said, limits care because many women feel uncomfortable – or unable – to communicate with male staff or only travel to health facilities.
The Magnitude-6 earthquake of 1 September and his aftershocks injured more than 3,600 people and left thousands of homeless in a country that had to be dealt with with serious auxiliary reductions and a whole series of humanitarian crises since the Taliban took over as foreign forces in 2021.
The Afghan Ministry of Health and a spokesperson for the Taliban administration did not respond immediately to a request for comments.
The Taliban said earlier that they would ensure that women could receive help.
The administration in 2022 ordered Afghan female NGO employees to stop working outside the house. Humanitarian officials say that there have been exemptions, in particular in the health and education sectors, but many said this patchwork and not enough to allow an increase in female staff, in particular in an emergency situation that required travel.
That meant that aid organizations and female staff were confronted with uncertainty, Sharma said, and in some cases the risk could not take the risk.
“The limitations are huge, Mahram’s problem (male guardian -requirements) continues and no formal exemption has been provided by the de facto authorities,” she said, and adds that her team had discussed the issue with the authorities last week.
“That is why we thought we had to argue with (authorities) to say, this is the time you really need to have more female health workers, let us bring them in and let us search in other places where they are available.”
Sharma said that in the future she was very concerned about women who had access to mental health care for both trauma and for those whose male family members had been killed, giving them limitations on women without a male guardian.
Peer generous from the SOMAI district in the province of Kunar, which was seriously affected by the earthquakes, said that many women from his village had experienced and struggled to reach medical care after the earthquake and high blood pressure.
“There is no female doctor for exams; there is only one male doctor available,” he said.
Sharma noted that the growing shortage of Afghan female doctors because the Taliban has excluded female students from high school and the university, which means that a pipeline of female doctors was not supplemented.
The UN estimates that around 11,600 pregnant women were also influenced by the earthquakes in a country with some of the highest parent mortality rates in Asia.
The financing cuts, including the American administration this year, had already left the health system. About 80 health facilities were already closed this year in the affected areas due to the American aid reductions and another 16 health posts had to be concluded due to damage caused by the earthquake, Sharma said.
