MSF opens eight new health facilities in Bamyan

AFGHANISTAN

Access to healthcare in Afghanistan is challenged in every way. Forty years of conflict, disasters and epidemics, including COVID-19, have combined into a complex humanitarian crisis. Pressure has been steadily building on an already undersized, over-burdened public health system since the curtailment of foreign funding in 2021.

Rural areas lack primary medical infrastructure and patients must travel long distances for treatments. The cost is too high for many. Women experience even more barriers than men, with restrictions on their freedom of movement and on their ability to work and study.

In Bamyan, a mountainous province in central Afghanistan where most people live in small, remote villages, more than 40 per cent of new mothers delivered their babies at home without professional assistance in 2022.

In response, MSF has opened eight new health facilities in Bamyan, we will extend our services in the region in the second half of 2023.