Sehatmandi Program, the country’s largest health project, is hindered by a lack of adequate funding. The project was previously funded by a grant of $140 million from the International Development Association, and by $425 million from the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund.
Ragini Varadarajan
The ‘heart of Asia,’ Afghanistan, is on the brink of economic collapse since the Taliban took over the country in August last year. Hunger has hit 95 percent of the population with the new government finding it increasingly challenging to decide ‘who to save and who to let die,’ according to a statement issued by the United Nations’ top humanitarian official, Martin Griffiths in September last year.
Healthcare has been the hardest hit. The country’s largest healthcare project, ‘Sehatmandi Program,’ has been hobbled by the lack of adequate funds. The project was earlier funded by the grant of $140 million from the International Development Association (IDA), and $425 million from the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF).
The SEHAT (System Enhancing for Health Actions in Transition) program, according to the country’s Ministry of Public Health, aims to expand the scope, quality, and coverage of health services.
The main goal of the SEHAT is to implement the Basic Package of Healthcare Services (BPHS) and Essential Package of Hospital Services (EPHS) – which are supported by the European Union (EU), the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), and the World Bank.
During the US occupation of the country, the program managed to build and sustain a relatively stable healthcare infrastructure. But over the last year, the funding crunch has reduced the access to basic medical facilities, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Afghanistan is already Polio-endemic, making it even more urgent for the WHO to extend help to the war-scarred country to enable it to deal with the pandemic and the other healthcare-related crises. At the moment, there is only 1 case of WPV1 (Wild Poliovirus type 1). Four cases were detected in 2021. The total cases of cVDPV2 (Circulating Vaccine-Derived Polioviruses) are 43.
Before the Taliban took over, the SEHAT program was doing well. The life expectancy rate had risen. In 2021 it was 65.29 years, a 0.52 percent increase from 2020. In 2020 it was 64.96 years, a 0.52 percent increase from the previous year. Infant mortality had also declined: The current rate is 46.032 deaths per 1000 births.
The country was also performing well on the vaccination front. The number of vaccine doses administered before the Taliban rule was 2.2 million. The country is in dire need of vaccines now. Currently, Afghanistan has around 179,184 Covid-19 cases. 7695 people have died from the disease which is a far smaller number than most other countries. The country has so far managed to administer a total of 6,066,579 Covid-19 jabs. Assuming every citizen requires at least two doses of the Covid vaccine, it still only makes up eight percent of the Afghani population.
“Allowing Afghanistan’s healthcare delivery system to fall apart would be disastrous,” Griffiths had warned last year while announcing the release of $45 million from an emergency fund to support Afghanistan’s crumbling healthcare system. “People across the country would be denied access to primary healthcare such as emergency caesarean sections and trauma care.”
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Afghanistan is in the grips of one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. “More than 24.4 million people will need humanitarian health aid in 2022, roughly two-thirds of the population,” the HRW said. “Afghanistan’s banking crisis and loss of funding has meant that most healthcare workers have not been paid for months, and clinics and hospitals are running seriously short of essential medicines and supplies”.
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