The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan led to bank closures since 15 August 2021 and the World Bank’s freezing its funding to Afghanistan. This has effectively cut funding for approximately two-thirds of Afghanistan’s health facilities in 31 out of 34 provinces. This breakdown in health services is having a rippling effect on the availability of basic and essential health care including maternity care, family planning, and routine childhood immunization, as well as on emergency response, polio eradication, and COVID-19 vaccination efforts. Over 3 million children in Afghanistan are estimated to need specialized acute malnutrition treatment services to save their lives. Similarly, 720,000 pregnant and lactating women (PLW) are undernourished and require specialized malnutrition treatment services. In addition, women and girls are exposed to extreme situations of violence and abuse due to ongoing fighting, displacement, economic implosion, and harmful social norms and practices. Girls face early marriage, honour killings, domestic abuse, and sexual violence. Boys suffer many of the same risks including sexual exploitation, along with military recruitment into armed conflict.

Expected Result

Increased access to lifesaving primary healthcare including but not limited to Sexual and Reproductive Health in Emergency (SRHiE) services for vulnerable internally displaced persons (IDPs) and host communities, particularly women of reproductive age and children under five years, and survivors of Gender Based Violence (GBV) in the Herat and Ghazni provinces of Afghanistan.

Main Activities

• 2 mobile health and nutrition teams established and equipped.
• Provision of gender responsive lifesaving primary health care services, GBV and COVID-19 services to emergency affected people.
• Provision of routine childhood immunization services in the target populations.
• Provision of Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF), nutritional counselling, screening and services to pregnant and lactating women and children.
• Provision of IYCF, nutritional counselling, screening and services to pregnant and lactating women and children