Agence France Presse, 11 April 2006
KABUL (AFP) - It was tough but it had to be done. After a walk, two days on donkey back and another two in a taxi, Sangin-Mah had finally been able to get her daughter to hospital.
They made the trek from their village in mountainous northern Afghanistan, southwards to the capital Kabul because Sara could get treatment nowhere else.
"This (hospital) is my last hope," says Sangin-Mah sitting next to her nine-year-old whose face is puffy from what doctors at the Indira Gandhi Institute
of Child Health diagnosed as "Nephrotic Syndrome", which affects the kidneys.
"Doctors in our village said she could not be treated down there," the mother told AFP, referring to a mud-brick clinic run by a non-governmental organisation.
While the Indian-funded hospital -- the largest and best public facility for children in the country -- is way better than any in Sangin-Mah's Badakhshan province, it is a far cry from such institutions in many other countries.
Twenty-four power, water and heating were installed about a year ago after an overhaul paid for by the Indian government. But the place, built in the 1960s, is run-down and overcrowded, sometimes with three children to a bed.
And, like other hospitals across the country, it suffers from a lack of modern equipment, medicine and trained doctors and nurses, says doctor Ghulam Yahyah Sultani.
Often staff have to admit defeat and recommend treatment at superior facilities in neighbouring Pakistan and Iran, says Sultani, who like most government doctors earns only 60 dollars a month.
Doctors at the Indira Gandhi hospital have assured chubby-cheeked Sara that she will recover. Between five and six children however die every month because they are admitted too late, Sultani says.
And while the constitution provides for free health care, the hospital is only able to meet less than 30 percent of prescriptions, meaning patients have to buy medicine elsewhere, he says.
Nearly twenty-five years of war, which ended with the toppling of the Taliban government in 2001, hammered the country's public health system.
Despite a stream of international aid and expertise since then, the country's health record remains dire, admits Health Minister Amin Fatemi.
There is one doctor for 3,700 people and one hospital bed for around 3,000 people, he tells AFP.
The health needs of the country's destitute population are acute: more than half suffer from chronic malnutrition and seven percent from severe malnutrition.
And around 600 children under the age of five die every day, including those who die at delivery, Fatemi says. About 1,600 of every 100,000 mothers die in or around childbirth -- one of the highest rates in the world.
There has been "significant progress" since the ouster of the Taliban enabled reconstruction to begin, with about 77 percent of the country now having access to health care, Fatemi says.
However without international help, which supported about 95 percent of the health system, Afghanistan "would fall back into disaster", he says.
"If the world stops helping us, the figures will drop again."
Afghanistan's development strategy, presented to its international donors agreed at the London conference three months ago, aims to have health care reach 95 percent of the population before 2010.
"But that will only be possible if the world meets its (aid) promises," Fatemi says.
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Citation: "Public health still a challenge for destitute Afghanistan," Agence France Presse, 11 April 2006.
Original URL: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/11042006/323/public-health-challenge-destitute-afghanistan.html
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