Girls miss out on life saving surgery under Taliban ‘gender apartheid'

Telegraph

28-02-2025

Afghan girls are going without vital surgical procedures because of discriminatory restrictions put in place by the Taliban, new medical data and first-hand accounts from the country suggest.
Instead they are being forced to rely on faith healers and traditional medicine – even in cases of serious and life-threatening injury and illness.
Despite a fifty-fifty gender split among children, over 80 per cent of all surgical procedures carried out at a charity-run paediatric unit in Kabul were performed on boys, according to a survey of its first 1,000 operations.
The research, published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, focused on the Ataturk Hospital, a government-run facility where a paediatric operating room was built in 2023 by Kids Operating Room (Kids OR), a UK-based charity.
Of 1,014 patients under the age of 14, 80.5 per cent were male. The proportion of boys being given elective surgeries was even higher, at 84.6 per cent, while emergent procedures – interventions required immediately to address life-threatening conditions – were also skewed heavily towards boys, who made up 72.7 per cent of those cases.
Analysing their findings, the report's authors suggested several factors were to blame for girls not receiving surgeries – ranging from 'local referral tendencies and socio-cultural features' to boys being more exposed to traffic or explosive remnants from Afghanistan's decades of conflict.
Evidence gathered by The Telegraph through interviews with doctors and families from across the country suggest draconian restrictions introduced by the Taliban are preventing girls and women from accessing life saving medical care.
'The only thing they are still allowed to do is breathe'
Since they swept back into power in 2021 on the back of a calamitous deal struck by the first administration of US President Donald Trump, a deluge of regime diktats has barred women from leaving home without a male relative, working, going to school or training as doctors and nurses.
Women have even been banned from raising their voices in public and speaking loudly inside their homes.
'It's not just about surgeries for girls – their access to healthcare has been severely restricted since the Taliban takeover, especially in remote areas,' said Ejaz Nemati* a doctor working in Herat.
'In the city, people can speak about it and it's different, but in small clinics outside cities, our colleagues are not even allowed to treat female patients. If they do, punishment awaits them,' he said.
'Girls here are deprived of everything – the only thing they are still allowed to do is breathe.'
Taliban officials insist there are no official policies that explicitly prohibit women from being given medical treatment.
'We provide healthcare services to everyone – girls and boys, women and men – equally, according to Islam,' said Faridullah Omari, a doctor at a Taliban-controlled hospital in Kabul.
But Taliban rules on women, which rights groups describe as a regime of gender apartheid, are clearly deterring many women and girls from even seeking care.
Golnesa*, whose husband was killed last year in a family dispute in their village in western Afghanistan, told The Telegraph of the challenges she faced as a woman with getting help for her daughter.
'My eight-year-old daughter had a severe cough, and I tried several times to take her to a doctor,' she said.
'Each time I stood by the road and waited for a car to take us to the city's hospital, the Taliban would approach us to ask where my husband was, and I would tell them he was dead – he had been killed.
'I would tell them I needed to take my daughter to the hospital but they would say I was lying,' she said, adding that Taliban morality police enforcers had accused her of wanting to visit the city unaccompanied for sinful reasons.
Eventually, as her daughter's condition worsened, Golnesa was able to enlist the help of a male relative from a neighbouring village who accompanied them on the long journey to a medical centre, where the eight-year-old stayed for a week before being discharged.
But when she needed to take her daughter back for further treatment, she faced the same scepticism and accusations, and the fear of falling foul of the morality police has confined her to the village.
'Pneumonia cannot be treated with herbal medicine'
Across Afghanistan, there are only five facilities specifically equipped to treat children – two government children's hospitals, a paediatric department within another government hospital, and two privately-run hospitals – and all of them are in Kabul. On top of this, the families of the sick or injured almost always have to foot the bill for any treatment they decide to get.
Together with the prohibitive cost and lack of availability of healthcare, the Taliban's restrictions mean more families are turning to faith healers and herbal remedies for healing – sometimes with disastrous consequences.
In recent weeks local media has been awash with messages from Afghan doctors warning parents not to use home remedies to treat serious illnesses in their children.
Dr Farhad Hamdard, a paediatric specialist in Nimruz province in the country's far south-west, urged families to seek medical care for cases of pneumonia.
'Pneumonia cannot be treated with herbal medicine,' he told Afghanistan's Pajhwok news agency.
'Some children have been brought to me who had simple pneumonia, but after being treated with herbal remedies, their condition worsened,' he said.
In other reports, Afghan doctors have warned against the use of onion juice or warm mustard oil to treat ear infections, or attempting to deliver babies at home without any medics present, or against swaddling children in blankets to try and cure them of measles.
Afghans, particularly in villages and remote areas, have long sought medical care from Mullahs rather than from modern medicine for children, a practice rooted in religious and cultural beliefs.
Since the Taliban's return to power, more people go to them before doctors as the country is now run by clerics, some of whom do not believe in modern medicine.
The Telegraph was told about a girl living in a village in eastern Afghanistan, who was born with a ventricular septal defect (VSD) – a small hole in her heart.
She died at the age of 10 last year after being taken repeatedly to a Mullah who attempted to cure her by writing Quranic verses on pieces of paper, burning them, and getting her to inhale the smoke.
'All of these restrictions imposed by the Taliban, like the ban on women travelling on their own or leaving the house after a certain hour and so on [mean] women in general tend not to actually seek professional help as much as they would in the past,' said Jelena Bjelica, a senior analyst at the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
'The fact is that the current environment, or the current legal regimen in Afghanistan, is such that they [women] have so little movement, their movement is so restricted that they wouldn't even ask for help except in an emergency,' she told The Telegraph. 'So the tendency is that they prefer not to leave the house and go for the traditional remedies.'
'Afghanistan is on the brink of a healthcare catastrophe'
Afghanistan has one of the world's least-developed healthcare systems, and women and girls have long struggled to access treatment.
But beyond deterring women and girls from seeking help, Taliban policies have now degraded the provision of medical care to a critical point.
Fada Mohammad Peykan, a former deputy health minister, said: 'A massive brain drain is underway, and the number of female doctors is falling rapidly. Outside major cities, most surgeons are men, and under Taliban rules, they cannot treat female patients.
'The situation is critical. No new female doctors are being trained, and those who remain are either confined to their homes or fleeing the country. Afghanistan is on the brink of a healthcare catastrophe,' he said.
Trump's decision to freeze US aid threatens to tip the country over the edge. His country is the largest donor to Afghanistan by far – it has sent $21 billion (£16.6bn) to the country since it withdrew its forces.
Afghanistan is totally dependent on US aid, receiving almost three-and-a half times its health budget in assistance from Washington.
The Afghan government is now scrambling to keep hospitals running and schools open.
With public services on the brink of collapse, the medical care needs of women and girls are falling even further down the list of priorities.
'Even before, people had little understanding of healthcare for girls. Under Taliban rule, the situation is deteriorating every day,' said Dr Nemati, the doctor from Herat.
'Many of those who cared about their daughters have fled the country. Those who remain are struggling to survive.'