ASIA/AFGHANISTAN – First baby arrives in MSF new maternity centre in Kabul

Friday, 5 December 2014

Kabul (Agenzia Fides) – In Afghanistan hardly anyone can afford private medical care, most pregnant mothers have their babies at home and the absence of specialised medical assistance can raise problems and deliveries can be fatal. When, at this beginning of this year the Doctors without Borders team first set foot in the hospital in the west Kabul district of Dasht-e-Barchi they found a brand maternity department with 42 beds completely empty. Nine months later, a few days after the opening of the maternity centre, a young mother arrived with complications, the doctors performed an successful emergency caesarean.
Besides complicated deliveries the MSF maternity team is helping to train 23 midwifes, 21 nurses and 4 gynaecologists. Situated near a busy market, behind a petrol station, Dasht-e-Barchi hospital and three other small medical centres are the only clinics to offer free healthcare. It is estimated that in this district of Kabul the population has grown is ten times in ten years to reach over one million. Alone, the MSF maternity department at this hospital cannot provide sufficient healthcare for the whole area: but the team expects to assist 600 natural births and 130 complicated deliveries and welcome the same numbers of new lives.
MSF began working in Afghanistan in 1981. In Dasht-e-Barchi district it works in close cooperation with the Public Health Ministry to support other new departments in hospitals at Ahmad Shah Baba, situated in east Kabul, and Boost in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province. At Kunduz, MSF runs a surgical trauma centre, supplying life-saving drugs to patients in northern Afghanistan. The NGO is also present in a maternity centre at Khost, in the east of the country., Wherever it operates, MSF guarantees free healthcare and life saving drugs. (AP) (5/12/2014 Agenzia Fides)


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