Bringing health care back to Afghanistan: "They need everything," even food and water

Government agencies, charities and physicians worldwide contemplate ways to rebuild the medical infrastructure of this war-ravaged country.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Jan. 28, 2002.

In mid-December, Mary Burry, MD, a neuroradiologist from Portland, Ore., arrived in the northern Afghanistan city Mazar-i-Sharif for a three-week volunteer stint at the local hospital.

Once there, she found patients sleeping two to a bed and physicians without medicines or basic equipment. She saw diseases that she'd only read about -- including two children she suspected had polio. She was unable to confirm this because the hospital did not have a lab. Others were severely malnourished. A few people even came without any physical ailments.

"They were very needful for someone to care about them," said Dr. Burry. "They've lived under such a terrible situation for so many years."

But at least in the city, the population has access to these health care workers who do what they can with minimal supplies. Outside the city, hundreds of thousands of Afghans are living in temporary camps with no access to any health services at all.

Years of civil war and instability have destroyed Afghanistan's health system, which was far below Western standards to begin with. Years of drought have made food supplies scarce. The water is unsafe to drink. Child and maternal mortality is among the highest in the world. Vaccination rates are low. There are not enough qualified health personnel. And, even if a person can get a prescription to treat what possibly ails them, there are no pharmacies where it can be filled.

Numerous organizations such as the World Health Organization and Northwest Medical Teams International, the group which sent Dr. Burry, have moved in to address urgent needs. Others are focusing on ways to help the struggling nation's medical system address long-term difficulties. These issues include the high incidence of infectious diseases such as measles and tuberculosis, outbreaks of scurvy and other nutrition-related illnesses, treatment of injuries caused by war and by the millions of landmines still in the ground, and providing mental health care to a traumatized population. [...]