Taliban claim to “protect” women, yet bar them from seeing male doctors and pursuing medical training
Maternal mortality in Afghanistan has reached a dire point, a result of a web of interconnected crises. The return of the Taliban and subsequent international aid cuts have created a healthcare collapse where women are the primary victims. Each factor reinforces the other, leaving Afghan women without care and providers.
Countless Afghan women and children die from preventable causes due to scarce, understaffed, and inaccessible healthcare facilities under Taliban restrictions.
These tragedies stem from a chain reaction. After years of dependence on international aid, Afghanistan’s healthcare system struggled to stay open once US aid cuts came into effect. In 2024, US funds comprised 43% of all aid that was scheduled to come into Afghanistan – all of which was abruptly cut and triggered widespread clinic closures.
With the closure of community clinics due to a lack of funds, the only option for pregnant women are the larger city hospitals, which are even harder to reach. These hospitals have also been operating on maximum capacities, with not enough beds for women along with the stark cut in funding larger hospitals have also faced with aid cuts. Hospital budgets have decreased by over 69% lately.
But financial collapse is only part of the story. The Taliban’s restrictions on women exacerbate the challenge that women face. When Shahnaz was in labor, she travelled to the nearest clinic 20 minutes away, but was met with disappointment when she discovered it was closed due to funding and staffing shortages. Other medical clinics were too far for her to travel to during her stage of labor. She could not afford the travel costs either. On the way back home, she gave birth to her child and died from hemorrhaging while her newborn baby passed away a few hours later.
Her husband, Abdul, said “I wept and screamed. My wife and child could’ve been saved if the clinic was open.”
Tragically, Shahnaz’s story is not unique. Gul Jan died in childbirth with her newborn son Safiullah. During Gul Jan’s pregnancy, clinics were open and she would regularly attend the clinic for check-ups. However, by the end of her pregnancy, the clinic was shut down due to a lack of funds and she died giving birth to her child at home from excessive blood loss.
“If the clinic had been open, she might have survived. And even if she had died, we would not have had regrets knowing the medics tried their best.”
Stories like Shahnaz and Gul Jans reveal how Afghanistan’s humanitarian and gender policies are inseparable. Not only are clinics closed because of funding cuts, but the Taliban’s restrictions on women have deepened the crisis. With the way things are going now, maternal mortality has the potential to increase by as much as 50% in comparison to the previous year. As hospitals struggle with fewer resources and the Taliban cut women’s salaries, the healthcare industry is losing female healthcare professionals who once sustained the system.
Razia Hanifi, a midwife, says “This year is the toughest, because of the overcrowding, the shortage of resources and the shortage of trained staff.”
The shortage of trained staff is a direct result of the Taliban ban on higher education for Afghan women. There are countless Afghan women who are ready and whose dream was to work in hospitals that are unable to because of the Taliban ban on education. On February 22, 2023, the Taliban closed four medical clinics in Ghazni because female doctors were treating male patients. This was followed up with an edict on December 2, 2024 announcing that Afghan women were no longer allowed to pursue medical education.
This has created a vicious cycle: aid cuts close clinics, and Taliban edicts prevent the medical professional pipeline. As a result, even if international funding returned to Afghanistan, there is an empty pipeline of female professionals for years to come.
Women in Afghanistan face a double burden that makes accessing healthcare almost impossible: the lack of open facilities and the lack of female medical professionals. The ban on women’s education is not only a present problem, but a long-term crisis.
In claiming to “protect” women through restrictive edicts that confine them to their homes, the Taliban has instead created a system that endangers women’s health, safety, and prosperity. The restrictions have completely destroyed the immediate and future foundation for women’s healthcare. The Taliban has inhibited access to clinics currently and erased the possibility of rebuilding the female workforce. Unable to speak freely or pursue education and medicine, Afghan women are trapped in silence – and dying as a result.
With no new medical staff being trained, Afghanistan’s healthcare system is collapsing from both ends – the present and the future. Women are bearing the brunt of Taliban restrictions and aid cuts, paying for it with their health and their lives.
Sources: BBC
