An Afghan midwife describes how a woman died in childbirth, along with her baby. She was snowed in at her village and couldn’t reach a hospital. Just weeks before, the health clinic in her village had closed. If it was open, a midwife could have helped her.
Other midwives, based in hospitals, tell NPR that their facilities are seeing women rushed in from remote areas where clinics have closed too late: The mothers and babies often die, say the midwives.
These maternal and baby deaths, they say, are partly a consequence of a reeling blow to Afghanistan’s fragile health system: the abrupt shuttering of USAID by the Trump administration, which once supplied more than 40% of all aid to this deeply poor country of some 40 million people. The World Health Organization said in a statement that over 200 clinics in Afghanistan closed as a result of American funding cuts.
“USAID should not have left Afghanistan. We are devastated,” says Fatima, a 27-year-old midwife who has worked in maternal care for the past seven years.
Making matters worse, other major European donors have also announced cuts to their foreign aid programs.
“It seems to be that other donors are following the U.S. — what Trump has done is give everyone a license to give up on funding aid,” says Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch. She has focused on Afghanistan closely for decades.
Already, the U.S. aid cuts have caused 206 health facilities to shut down in Afghanistan, according to a World Health Organization count in late March. The WHO report said without urgent intervention, around 200 more facilities would shut down by June, impacting around 2.4 million people.
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