With meagre funding and lack of resources, one maternity hospital has turned to cellphones to perform C-sections and routine deliveries.
The power is off and there isn’t enough fuel to run the generators full-time, but at the Malik Mohammed Khan hospital in Maidan Wardak province, the obstetrics unit has to keep delivering babies. Head obstetrician Mariam Shirzai Wardak is determined, but anxious about the future, worrying constantly about how long they will be able to keep going. A valid worry in a country that has been isolated since August, when the Taliban took power and the international community froze all aid and its assets abroad. The unit has no sterile gloves or pain relief medication – and patients admitted for C-sections have to bring their own fuel to run the generator long enough for the anesthesia to work.
If they can’t afford it, someone from the hospital usually volunteers to pay for it. But the generators can’t run the operating theatre lights at the same time. So for C-sections and routine deliveries, the doctors use cellphone flashlights.
But how long can a cellphone battery last? Patients also have to bring their own supplies like gauze, scalpels and sterilising fluids from pharmacies; a cost of up to AFG 2000 ($26) in case of C-sections.
Dr Shirzai says the situation is a “living nightmare”.
An uneasy future
Since the Taliban takeover in August, international donors stopped all funding.
The United States froze nearly $10 billion in Afghan government assets held by the Federal Reserve – ostensibly to press the Taliban to meet demands including rights for women, girls and minorities.
“Since the Taliban took over, things have gotten worse in terms of health aid and medicines and there is a tremendous decrease in the equipment we need for surgery,” Dr Shirzai told TRT World.
“With no international aid, it is getting increasingly difficult to manage child births.”
Before the Taliban took over, 70 to 80 percent of the government budget was funded by international donors.
The hospital previously relied on assistance from the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA), an international non-profit organisation.
That funding has stopped.
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