KABUL: From her private hospital in Afghanistan’s capital, doctor Najmussama Shefajo predicts a rise in maternal mortality rates “within three or four years”, following the latest restrictions on women’s education.

The Taliban’s supreme leader is reportedly behind a ban on women studying midwifery and nursing at training institutes across the country, already among the worst in the world for deaths in childbirth.

“We may not see the impact very quickly, but after three to four years we will see the maternal mortality rate go up and up,” said Shefajo.

“People will for sure have more babies at home. But what about complications? What about operations? Many procedures cannot be done at home.”

Since the Taliban government banned women from universities two years ago, Shefajo has been giving on-the-job medical training, including in midwifery and nursing.

But she said she doesn’t have the capacity or facilities to take on every woman keen to learn in her hospital, despite no shortage of volunteers.

“Midwifery and nursing are like two wings of the doctors; if the bird doesn’t have wings, it cannot fly,” she added, ducking behind curtains to treat patients.

Already Afghanistan is facing a “desperate shortage of trained healthcare workers, especially women”, according to the UN children’s agency Unicef.

No official notice has been issued by the Taliban government, but health ministry sources and managers of training institutes said this month that they had been told to block women from classes.

‘Catastrophic consequences’

Restricting medical training is the latest action against women’s education since the Taliban swept to power in 2021, imposing rules the United Nations has called “gender apartheid”.

“In a country where women and children depend on female health professionals for culturally sensitive care, cutting the pipeline of future health providers would put lives at risk,” Unicef’s executive director Catherine Russell said in a statement.

Training institutes had ensured women would continue to learn healthcare skills, such as midwifery and nursing, or laboratory work, pharmacy and dentistry.

The ban would impact about 35,000 women studying at medical training centres, according to a figure from a health ministry source.

“We are concerned about the effects on the already fragile healthcare system,” said Achille Despres, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Crescent in Afghanistan, where the organisation offers health services and training.

International NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which runs some of its busiest maternity hospitals in Afghanistan, also warned of the consequences of the ban, given that the nation’s “medical needs … are huge”.

“There is no healthcare system without educated female health practitioners,” country representative Mickael Le Paih said in a statement.

Afghanistan and MSF already face a dearth of obstetrician-gynaecologists in a country with high fertility rates where women often have children from a young age, Le Paih said.

Published in Dawn, December 14th, 2024