10 July 2018
News
HERAT, Afghanistan – By midnight, Khurshid, 35, was in serious trouble. Five months pregnant and bleeding heavily, she had passed out at home. Her family carried her unconscious body to the nearest – and only – health... Read more
2 August 2017
News
SAYED KHEL, Afghanistan – “It was seven in the morning, and I had not yet started my working day, when Hafsa* was brought to the clinic with normal labour pains,” said Mahbooba, a 27-year-old midwife who runs the Aqtash... Read more
2 June 2017
News
SID, Serbia – Aliah*, a 28-year-old woman from Afghanistan, took an unusually brave step in April: She spoke with candour about her sexual and reproductive health needs at a workshop in Sid, a town in north-western... Read more
7 June 2016
News
KABUL, Afghanistan – For 49 years, a traumatic childbirth injury left Noorjahan living in the shadows. A prolonged, obstructed labour, and lack of emergency maternal health care, left her with an obstetric fistula – a... Read more
16 May 2016
News
BALAKOH, Afghanistan – It was midnight in the remote Afghan village of Balakoh, and 37-year-old Zainab was entering her tenth hour of labour in her mountainside home. With no skilled birth attendant present and her pain... Read more
17 February 2016
News
BALKH, Afghanistan – It was after midnight and Bibi Gul* was in critical condition when her husband and eldest daughter brought her to a hospital in Balkh, a province in northern Afghanistan.
When the nurses examined... Read more
23 November 2015
News
HERAT, Afghanistan – "It is better to have one child rather than many, so you can give your child the support he needs and the best education you can offer," said Farzana, 37, at the family planning centre in Herat city... Read more
9 November 2015
News
KABUL, Afghanistan – "We had a case where one of the callers, a girl, was pregnant, and when she told her boyfriend about her condition, he disappeared. She was desperate when she called us, even considering committing... Read more
21 April 2015
News
KABUL, Afghanistan – “They told me that my mother had sold me to them,” Zarmina* said of her kidnappers, who snatched her from her home in Afghanistan when she was only 13, then forced her into sexual servitude.
Her... Read more
7 January 2015
News
NEW YORK/KABUL – Boosting the ranks of midwives has helped to lower Afghanistan’s towering maternal and newborn death rates, a new report shows.
Decades of grinding conflict and repressive attitudes towards women had... Read more