We have been active in Afghanistan since 2010. The security situation remains difficult. Attacks by the Taliban and other radical groups are part of people’s everyday lives. Many families have lost everything and live in extreme poverty. Medical care in the country is poor. Many hospitals have been destroyed and there is a lack of qualified doctors.
The efforts of our three medical teams in Kunduz, Mazar-i-Sharif and Faizabad require courage. Our four surgeons are always in mortal danger in their work for cleft children. In particular when they visit remote villages to educate families of cleft children and convince them of the need for surgery, they are exposed to the risk of attacks.
The security situation and the accessibility of patients in remote areas will remain the major challenges in the further development of our Afghan project locations in 2020.
Despite the problematic conditions in the country, we managed to start a training project for Afghan surgeons in 2010 with the support of the Federal Foreign Office. For security reasons, the training took place outside the country. Training locations included the Tajik capital Dushanbe and treatment centers in India. The trained surgeons, Sebghatullah Natory (Kunduz) and Dr. Habibullah Atif (Faizabad) have now been independently performing operations since late 2012. Both surgeons have started aid projects at their home locations and regularly operate cleft children who would have no access to medical care without their work.
In 2015 we were able to win two new partners for our project in Afghanistan in Nooria Zia and Dr. Wahed Ershad in Mazar-i-Sharif. The two surgeons were trained in cleft surgery for three months in our Indian cleft center in Visakhapatnam.
Children in Afghanistan still suffer terribly. Cleft children suffer particularly: they have little chance to receive a safe operation in the country. Please help these children with your donation. Every child counts!
Afghanistan is characterized by decades of war and political unrest: high child and maternal mortality, malnutrition, polio, violence against women and girls are the result. Despite the end of the Taliban regime in 2001, the security situation is still very tense, attacks are part of people’s everyday lives. Many families live in extreme poverty in the underdeveloped country.
Children are especially hard hit. 600,000 girls and boys under the age of five are severely malnourished, 30 percent of the children have to do child labor, and more than one million are orphans.
