Afghanistan: Excluding Women from Medical Institutes Threatens the Future of Healthcare

Excluding women from medical institutes will impact women's health in Afghanistan. The announcement from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to bar women from studying in medical institutes will have far-reaching consequences on women’s health in the country, said Doctors Without Borders (MSF) today. ​ 

This is another stage in the removal of women from public and professional life. The insufficient number of female healthcare workers in the country already impacts the availability of healthcare in Afghanistan, especially given the separation of male and female hospital wards. New constraints will further restrict access to quality healthcare and pose serious dangers to its availability in the future.

“There is no healthcare system without educated female health practitioners”, says Mickael Le Paih, MSF’s Country Representative in Afghanistan. “At MSF, more than 50 percent of our medical staff are women. The decision to bar women from studying at medical institutes will further exclude them from both education and the impartial provision of healthcare.” ​ 

The medical needs in Afghanistan are huge, and more women Afghan medical staff need to be trained to address them. For this to happen, women need to have access to education. The education restrictions put in place in 2024, 2022 and 2021 considerably reduce the availability of future female medical staff. In Khost, one of MSF’s busiest maternities worldwide, it is already challenging to fill all necessary positions – including midwives and gynaecologists – and female staff are essential for maternal healthcare programmes. From January to June 2024, MSF assisted 22,300 deliveries.

If no girls can attend secondary school, and no women can attend university or medical institutes, where will the female health professionals of the future come from and who will attend to Afghan women when they are at their most vulnerable? For essential services to be available to all genders, they must be delivered by all genders,” continued Le Paih.

MSF in Afghanistan remains committed to serving all those in need of medical care by continuing to advocate for women to have continued access to medical education and education more broadly.

MSF runs seven projects in Helmand, Kunduz, Herat, Khost, Kandahar and Bamyan, focusing on delivering secondary healthcare. In 2023, MSF teams were responsible for over 132,600 outpatient consultations, 96,000 inpatient admissions, 383,600 emergency room consultations, 15,200 surgical interventions, and assisted 45,260 deliveries. There were 10,500 patients enrolled in the ambulatory therapeutic feeding centres and 12,500 patients admitted to inpatient therapeutic feeding centres. ​ ​ 

Najiba, an MSF midwife, seeing a patient in the MSF-supported Band-e-Amir community health facility in Yakawalang, a remote district in Bamyan, Afghanistan. Sara, 25, is a mother of two and suffers from low blood pressure (hypotension). It’s her second visit to the facility. In the past, she had to go to Yakawalang district clinic, an hour away from her home village in Band-e- Amir. | Date taken: 01/04/2024 | Photographer: Nava Jamshidi | Location: Afghanistan

MSF gynaecologists check the medical records of mothers at Khost Maternity Hospital. | Date taken: 21/12/2023 | Photographer: Paul Odongo | Location: AfghanistanAn MSF nurse places a blood pressure monitoring cuff strap on a woman’s arm to check her blood pressure. Inpatient ward of Khost Maternity Hospital. | Date taken: 21/12/2023 | Photographer: Paul Odongo | Location: Afghanistan

Nkosi Mahlangu

Communications Specialist, Doctors Without Borders (MSF Southern Africa)

• nkosi.mahlangu@joburg.msf.org
• +27(0) 11 403 4440
• +27(0) 82 924 8454

• www.msf.org.za
• MSFSouthernAfrica
• @MSF_southafrica

About Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is a global network of principled medical and other professionals who specialise in medical humanitarian work, driven by our common humanity and guided by medical ethics. We strive to bring emergency medical care to people caught in conflicts, crises, and disasters in more than 70 countries worldwide.

In South Africa, the organisation is recognised as one of the pioneers of providing Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) in the public sector and started the first HIV programmes in South Africa in 1999. Until today, the focus of MSF’s interventions in the country has primarily been on developing new testing and treatment strategies for HIV/AIDS and TB in Eshowe (Kwa-Zulu Natal) and Khayelitsha (Western Cape).

In Tshwane, we run a migration project, and we offer medical and psychosocial care to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, who struggle to access public health services under South Africa’s increasingly restrictive.

Previously we offered free, high-quality, confidential medical care to survivors of SGBV in Rustenburg.

To learn more about our work in South Africa, please visit this page on our website (www.msf.org.za). To support MSF’s work: