150,000 Women Work in Health Sector in Afghanistan, Says Taliban
Qalandar Ebad, Taliban’s health minister, announced that 150,000 female employees, including doctors, nurses and vaccinators, work in Afghanistan's health centers. Ebad has counted the United Nations’ vaccinators among the health ministry employees.
With the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, majority of Afghan women became housewives, and the Afghan health system is on the brink of collapse.
Najm Sama Shafajo, the head of Afghan Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Association, said that in 2021, 2,300 health centers had been closed across the country.
Shafajo added that with the closure of these health centers, about 27,000 health workers, including Afghan 7,000 women, have lost their jobs.
Recently, Johns Hopkins University announced in a report that 81% of female health workers in Afghanistan have experienced harassment and violence from the Taliban in their work life.
These women have said that they were beaten by Taliban agents because of going around without a male guardian. According to the report, the strictness of the Taliban and the irregular payment of health workers who provide help to mothers and babies have caused some of them to not be able to work regularly and some of them to leave the service.
According to the report of the International Rescue Committee, in the previous government, about 75% of Afghanistan's public expenses relied on foreign sources. In particular, about 30 million Afghans depended on health services through a programme managed by the World Bank.
The World Bank provided a large part of the needs of nearly three thousand hospitals in Afghanistan, including the salaries of health workers.
