Salaries have not been paid in six months at one hospital north of Kabul, leaving nurses without even the bus fare to get to work. There is no money for medical supplies or food
ABDUL QASIM SANGIN’S medical career began with the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. He is not sure it can survive their return. Dr Sangin was a final-year student in Kabul when America ousted the Islamists from power two decades ago. He has since risen to become the director of a provincial hospital. Yet in just the four months since the tables turned and the Taliban retook the country, his clinic has become a shadow of its former self.
Three-quarters of the Afghan government budget was met by foreign donors until the Taliban’s march on Kabul in August. That funding stopped overnight as donors balked at bankrolling a regime that retains links with al-Qaeda and prevents girls from going to secondary school, among other characteristics. Yet without foreign cash the fragile state built at great expense over two decades is quickly collapsing. Health care is an obvious casualty.
Fixing the mess is now the responsibility of the Taliban. As insurgents, they boasted they would run a less corrupt administration than that of Ashraf Ghani, the president who later fled when the Taliban took over. They used to deliver services in territory they controlled by piggybacking on Kabul’s capacity, allowing centrally funded doctors and teachers to continue as long as they abided by the Taliban’s strict codes. Now themust run the entire show with no money.
The blame for the dismal state of health care in Afghanistan, he says, lies with the foreigners and the former government: “The biggest problem is that the foreigners have frozen our funds. People do not have the economic power to buy their prescriptions. The former government has left us with a lot of debts.”
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