Author: Jahanzaib Wesa
The Health Sector and the Risk of Losing Female Medical Staff; Another Gendered Tragedy in Afghanistan
While today’s world benefits from modern achievements in medicine and growing progress toward equity in healthcare, in the wounded geography of Afghanistan, the very “right to survive” has been taken hostage. April 7, 2026, in Afghanistan is not a day for celebration, but a day to recall a difficult reality: the already fragile health system continues to weaken under the pressure of policies of exclusion and repression. The deprivation of women from education and work is no longer merely a political or human rights issue; it is a silent genocide unfolding in operating theaters and maternity wards.
On one hand, with the ban on girls’ education, no girl is able to enter specialized medical training or join the health sector to provide care to citizens, especially women. On the other hand, the increasing restrictions imposed by the Taliban on female doctors and healthcare workers within medical centers have narrowed their working space, gradually pushing part of this professional workforce out of the health sector. This situation further intensifies the vulnerability of women who are in need of medical services.
In a society where prevailing cultural norms make the presence of female doctors a vital necessity for treating women, preventing female healthcare workers from working amounts to a direct threat to the health of thousands of women who, from cities to the most remote parts of Afghanistan, are left alone between pain and death.
The tragedy unfolding today in the gynecology and maternity wards of Afghanistan’s hospitals is the direct result of gender-based de-specialization. The death of a mother due to lack of access to a midwife or a female doctor is not a natural event; rather, it is a managed and preventable loss of life. Newborns who, before experiencing the warmth of their mother’s embrace, come to rest in hospital morgues, stand as honest witnesses to this reality: when knowledge is restricted, death expands.
It can be clearly stated that the presence of female doctors and women healthcare workers in Afghanistan has reached a critical point, as there is no new workforce to replace the existing one. With the end of the working lives of current professionals, women will be entirely removed from the health sector.
Every day that a university remains closed places another brick on the high wall of ignorance and deprivation, a cost paid not by policymakers, but by innocent children and defenseless mothers, who bear it with their health and their lives.
The international community and global institutions cannot pass by the current crisis in the health sector and the right to education for girls and women with neutral statements. Silence in the face of the removal of women from the field of healthcare is complicity in the destruction of Afghanistan’s future generations.
The right to education, the right to work, and the right to access medical care form the triad of a nation’s survival. The immediate and unconditional reopening of educational institutions, along with the visible and active presence of female healthcare workers in hospitals, is the only path out of this historic deadlock. Health is a right, not a privilege; a right that cannot be withheld from the lungs of a nation under any pretext.
