Dr. Wahid Majrooh is acting minister of public health in Afghanistan, and he faces two looming challenges: leading the country's COVID response and maintaining health-care services in the wake of the Taliban takeover in mid-August. The COVID situation is daunting: over 150,000 cases and 7,000 deaths so far. The overall health-care picture is critical as well. To prevent the Taliban from gaining access to aid money, the World Bank and other international aid organizations suspended $600 million in funding, including support for the Sehatmandi project, which paid salaries for 20,000 health-care workers at 2,800 facilities across the country. Because of the suspension in funds, more than 2,000 of these facilities are shutting down, leaving the Afghan people bereft of care, both because of the inability to pay staff and the general lack of funding for health-care resources. Health workers are in short supply too. Many have left the country. And women, who are a major part of the force of community health workers, at first stayed back from work, fearing violence and Taliban retaliation. Half of Afghanistan's 20,000 community health workers are women. On August 28, in the face of crippling staff shortages, the Taliban allowed all 2,000 women health-care workers to resume duties. In this uneasy limbo, Majrooh, who joined the ministry in 2015 and assumed his current position in January of this year, discussed the health-care picture in a phone interview with NPR. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Can you give us a sense of how Afghanistan's health-care system is now faring? We are on the verge of collapse. Our health-care system is very dependent on foreign aid. In 31 of our 34 provinces, primary health-care solutions are contracted to non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The ministry is not directly involved in providing these services. The World Bank and other international donors have frozen all funding. There is no clarity either about when this funding will resume. One of the main issues we're facing is that the donors have opted to not channel funds to Afghanistan at this time. They have sidelined the Ministry of Public Health as well, even though we've collaborated for years. And that's because they don't trust the Taliban – even though the officials are the same as in the pre-Taliban government? They justify [the freeze] with their own perception that the ministry is part of a system that they don't recognize at this date. But if communication is not sustained now, then it will have an impact on our dealings in the future as well. How many doctors have left the country in the past month? It is difficult to be able to present a figure, but the brain drain has been immense across the provinces. In just the region of Herat where I live, I estimate that at least 45 to 50 doctors and nurses have left.
All data is taken from the source: http://npr.org
Article Link: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/09/18/1038068777/afghan-health-minister-health-care-is-on-the-verge-of-collapse-but-im-optimistic
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