Women's Health In Afghanistan Essay

Women’s Health in Afghanistan

Sumai Williams

I. The Problem
Many people may not realize what women may go through on a daily basis. Women in Afghanistan are discriminated against and face oppression in their everyday lives. Oppression faced by women is a tremendous problem not only in Afghanistan but all over the world. One of the biggest problems in Afghanistan that needs to be addressed is women's health.
First let’s talk about how the rights of women in Afghanistan started to become restricted and banned. Before the Taliban rule, women were able to vote and go to college. They were able to wear what they felt comfortable in and could work. When the taliban came into rule, in early 1995, they banned women from doing a lot of things. One of the rights that were banned was a woman’s right to healthcare by men. Women did not have the right be have jobs let alone be a doctor. The type of schooling the doctors would go through were really a wasted effort. Medical schools in Kabul have no “textbooks, teaching slides or anatomy charts.” The Taliban “often

burned them because of their graphic depictions of the human body. Some hospitals in the capital and other major cities lack microscopes and operating tables” (“Women Suffer Most in Afghan Health Crisis, Experts Say” par. 3). It is basically like having a random citizen off the street acting as your doctor. “Afghanistan needs doctors in rural areas, female doctors, and senior specialists. Female doctors were not trained during the Taliban era and are especially important in a country where cultural norms make it difficult for a doctor to examine a member of the opposite sex” (“Medical Education Must be Rehabilitated in Afghanistan”).
Afghanistan under the Taliban rule is when women’s health rights were the most restricted. According to several sources, women must use different hospitals than men. Those hospitals were usually further away and had less doctors. Most doctors were not properly trained and did not have the right equipment to conduct surgeries. Due to the lack of proper equipment and doctors, many women were dying from child births and pregnancies. Afghanistan is considered to be one of the worst places to be pregnant. It it sad to think that one could get pregnant and not know if she or child will survive. That is a terrifying thought to have while trying to raise a family. ¨Many Afghans in the most remote rural areas have never even seen a doctor, nurse or paramedic. Many rural clinics have no electricity or running water, and lack basic medical instruments¨ (“Women Suffer Most in Afghan Health Crisis, Experts Say” par. 3) which is completely unacceptable.
Women are giving birth without any pain medicine or certain fluids to make sure that them and the baby are safe.

Women often have their baby being born already dead, which is combined with excessive bleeding. “Over half of births in Afghanistan — 65 percent — take place at home, contributing to low levels of vaccinations and a mortality rate that's still high” (“Afghan women largely lack healthcare, education”) because many hospitals were too far to travel to. One acting component to the lack of women’s health is that women are uneducated about it. If women were educated more on birth giving and the importance of not having a child under the age of 18, many deaths and miscarriages could be prevented. “92.9 percent of married women ages 15-19 are not using any method of contraception at all.” Women in urban areas tend to be more educated than women in rural areas. Also that with the rich women than poor

women.

Another rising problem in healthcare is disease. Disease is big issue. Some diseases that are popular in Afghanistan are malaria , which is spread by mosquitos, HIV/Aids because of drug users, typhoid fever, which is spread by food and water that is contaminated by sewage, and other diseases are rising. Without the proper health care these disease will continue to rise and become a major problem. People are getting infected because Afghanistan does not have the proper medications to cure and/or treat these diseases which normally results in death.
In present day the current state of the issue is, it is being worked on and is slowly getting better. It is still not where it needs to be but it is better than what it was. “Now 65% of Afghans have access to basic healthcare (compared to 8% during the Taliban’s rule)” (Afghanistan and Health Care for Women”). If action is not taken to fix this problem, then women and their children will continue to die. Women will continue to not have the resources needed to have a successful childbirth and an easy pregnancy.
This program needs to be funded because about 500,000 women die each year during childbirth. Some women are giving birth to a dead child. The children are the next generation. They are the future and if children are not surviving then that is a lost generation.