“I begged them, my daughter was dying.”
These words were a plea from a mother, Zarin Gul, whose pregnant daughter, Nasrin, was suffering excruciating pains that required immediate attention from a health facility. However, on their way to the health center, they were stopped by a Taliban checkpoint due to a lack of a male escort.
Nasrin never came back home. Neither did the baby she carried inside.
Nasrin’s death is just one of many tragedies. In Afghanistan, many women find it impossible to access medical care due to numerous hurdles. Access to a hospital is often not only about distance or cost; it is also about obtaining permission and having a male guardian escort the woman to the hospital.
In the last 5 years, regulations by the Taliban on women’s movements, education, and job opportunities have resulted in the deterioration of the country’s health care system. Women are required to travel with a male chaperone regardless of the medical emergency. At the same time, the prohibition of female education and restrictions on their medical training put the future of the health care system in jeopardy for females. Less qualified staff members took the place of the professionals in the local clinic in Baghlan following the change in government. Patients often receive inadequate care and are frequently provided simple medications like paracetamol regardless of their condition.
Reduced humanitarian funding resulted in the closure of more than 422 medical facilities in 2025, which restricted approximately 3 million people’s access to medical care. The need has increased, especially for women and children, due to recurrent disease outbreaks and climate calamities.
The Taliban restrictions are not only affecting women seeking care today, they are also undermining the future of Afghanistan’s healthcare system. Since the Taliban banned girls from secondary schools and universities, the pipeline of future female doctors, nurses, midwives, and other healthcare professionals has been severely disrupted. In more traditional communities where it is required that women be treated by female medical staff, the loss of an entire generation of educated women threatens to create even greater shortages in the years ahead.
Every day, 24 mothers and 167 infants die from preventable causes. Around 14.5 million people living across 21,570 villages do not have access to basic health facilities; therefore, their reproductive, maternal, and child health are significantly impacted.
In the Pashtun Kot area of Faryab province, where there are no clinics and only a mobile health team serves the population, a 33-year-old woman with four children told the Afghanistan Analysts Network about the challenges of getting healthcare: “Our village doesn’t have any public services. Midwives and a mobile health team visit, but we don’t have a clinic. A clinic has been opened in Kata Qala, but it’s far away … and our village has no private clinic. The government has promised to build a clinic, but it hasn’t done so yet. We don’t have a pharmacy, but there’s a doctor who sells medicines locally. When we need medicine, we buy it from him.”
Nasrin’s death was preventable. That is what makes her story so devastating.
Women in Afghanistan are being forced to navigate a healthcare system increasingly constrained by restrictions on movement and the systematic exclusion of women from public life. These policies are not merely limiting opportunities; they are costing lives.
