SIGAR

AFGHAN WOMEN
A young midwife advises a mother and her five-month-old daughter at a village health
clinic in Parwan Province. (World Bank photo by Graham Crouch)
and health information of [Afghanistan’s] citizens.” 116 Included in this data
is information specifically relevant to women and children, such as fertility
levels, marriage rates, awareness and use of family planning methods,
breastfeeding practices, nutritional status of mothers and young children,
childhood and maternal health and mortality, as well as information on
domestic violence. 117
One of the biggest threats to the lives of Afghan women is maternal
mortality. According to USAID, in 2002, Afghanistan had one of the worst
maternal-mortality rates in the world due to a lack of basic health care,
equipment, and facilities. 118 The U.S. government, in partnership with
the Afghan Ministry of Public Health (MOPH), implemented programs
to directly address this issue. In 2008, USAID initiated a $259.6 million
Partnership Contracts for Health project that ran until 2015. Part of this
program involved USAID and MOPH training midwives in five remote provinces.
119 As a result of this and other donor-funded programs, USAID claims
that the number of midwives has increased from 467 during Taliban rule to
at least 4,000 today. 120
Despite such improvements, questions remain about the degree to which
U.S. efforts have succeeded in reducing maternal-mortality rates. Some
experts disagree with earlier statistics showing major improvements in this
area; the facts will remain unclear at least until the full results of the Afghan
Demographic Health Survey are released. 121 In SIGAR’s interviews, many of
the Afghan women raised continuing concerns about maternal mortality. A
member of parliament from a rural area lamented the lack of female doctors:
“Women are dying at home, especially during childbirth, because men
do not want to take them to male doctors.” 122 This sentiment was echoed by
Rangina Kargar, another parliamentarian from remote Faryab Province. “It
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SPECIAL INSPECTOR GENERAL I AFGHANISTAN RECONSTRUCTION