Afghanistan's shortage of female health workers deepens its maternal-care crisis

A healthcare system under strain

Women and newborns in Afghanistan are confronting a deepening healthcare crisis as remote clinics operate with limited staff and crowded urban hospitals absorb patients who have few alternatives. Sky News documented the conditions in Nuristan and Kabul, including families travelling long distances for treatment and wards where several babies share a bed. Its report included extensive original photography from clinics, hospitals and affected communities.

At Kabul's Indira Gandhi children's hospital, medical staff described severe overcrowding and frequent deaths among critically ill children. In Nuristan, women recounted losing children after struggling to obtain timely care. These accounts are observations from the inspected report and should not be converted into nationwide totals. They nevertheless illustrate how geography, poverty, damaged infrastructure and a shortage of trained personnel combine to make otherwise treatable emergencies more dangerous.

Restrictions shrink the future workforce

The central long-term risk is the erosion of Afghanistan's female medical workforce. Taliban restrictions prevent most girls from continuing education beyond the early secondary years, while constraints on women's employment and movement complicate both training and access to treatment. In a society where many patients cannot readily consult male practitioners, fewer female doctors, nurses and midwives can translate directly into delayed prenatal care, unattended births and missed diagnoses.

United Nations health reporting supports the scale of the underlying problem. A May 2026 UN country-team report put maternal mortality at 521 deaths per 100,000 live births and child mortality at 56 per 1,000 live births in 2023. A separate UN human-rights assessment published in February detailed barriers created by restrictions on women, shortages of female health workers and inadequate access to skilled birth attendance and antenatal care.

Aid capacity and the next generation

International programmes continue to provide some specialised services. The UN and Islamic Development Bank initiative described training health workers and supporting fistula treatment centres, with direct and indirect benefits extending beyond individual patients. Such programmes can preserve expertise and prevent some deaths, but they cannot alone replace a nationwide pipeline of students progressing from school into medical education, supervised practice and permanent clinical employment.

What happens next will depend on whether the Taliban authorities ease restrictions affecting female education and medical training, and whether donors sustain community-level healthcare despite wider aid pressures. The immediate humanitarian concern is that the existing generation of female professionals will retire or leave without enough replacements. That would make pregnancy and childhood illness still more hazardous, particularly in provinces where difficult terrain already places hospitals hours away.