Afghanistan’s Health System Is in Critical Condition. We Are Here to Support It.

Shekiba has worked for EMERGENCY for 13 years and is one of eight residents who recently started the specialisation course in anaesthesiology at our Surgical Centre in Kabul, Afghanistan. She began as a nurse before qualifying as a doctor in the intensive care unit (ICU). Always with us, always at our hospital in Kabul, her incredible professionalism is matched by her powerful connection with patients. “I have many memories about every patient. I remember a child in ICU. Her name was Asia, five years old. She kept calling me and crying for me, didn’t let me leave her. She thought of me as a mother.” 

Shekiba has cared for so many patients over the years here, and continues to do so with no fear other than for her people to be forgotten: “Afghanistan is our home, our country, our everything. During the war, people were dying of conflict. Now people are dying of malnutrition. Before, we wouldn’t go outside to avoid the bombs, but now we are dying in our homes. The economic situation is poor and health problems get worse as a result.”

Shekiba tells us the blunt reality of conditions in Afghanistan. The critical state of the healthcare system is what our programme is here to support, both by providing care for patients and training for local colleagues like Shekiba. 

Even if some Afghans have lost hope for the future, we haven’t lost our commitment to restoring it. 
 

Photo ©️ EMERGENCY Archive

EMERGENCY’s Afghanistan Programme is co-funded by the European Union.