AFGHANISTAN The Taliban prohibit women from practicing health professions and promote traditional medicine

Young Afghan women, already excluded from universities, had been left with the possibility of attending professional institutes. Without midwives and nurses, women find it extremely difficult to access healthcare. The same days that the decision was known, the Taliban Minister of Health was in Beijing for a conference (promoted by the WHO) on traditional medicine.

Kabul () – The Taliban have imposed a new ban on Afghan women: already excluded from university, they will now not even be able to attend vocational training institutes in the health sector. But at the same time, the Ministry of Health has created a department to integrate traditional medicine practices following an international conference held in Beijing.

In the last two days, courses in nursing, midwifery, dentistry, laboratory techniques and similar have been closed, for a total of 18 disciplines. The ban, announced on Monday, December 3, applies to all public and private institutions in Afghanistan. The communication did not come through an official Ministry of Health document: earlier in the week, Taliban officials summoned dozens of directors, who were simply ordered to carry out the order of Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada.

In the last two years, students who had finished high school and could not access university had turned to vocational institutes. There is talk of 35 thousand young people according to local sources. “What should we do with only 10 percent of our students?” commented a director to the news agency AFP after the announcement.

The decision leaves a huge gap in the healthcare sector, especially for nurses and midwives, of whom there was already a serious shortage. In effect, women can only be cared for by other women and men had already been prohibited from caring for women.

Afghan girls who now go to school can only study until they are 12 years old. Women cannot carry out a series of jobs in contact with the public, they cannot travel alone or frequent spaces open to men. They can’t even speak too loudly. The situation has been defined as “gender apartheid” by international commentators and has also been denounced by a Pashtun organization (the ethnic group to which most of the Taliban belong) based in Pakistan.

The Taliban’s decision will further aggravate an already precarious situation. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Afghanistan is one of the countries that already has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, with 620 deaths per 100,000 live births.

Polio cases are also increasing: from July to early November, 17 new cases were recorded, and the WHO reported an increase 238% compared to 2023. Health experts have expressed concern that, due to the policy change, the vaccination campaign may now not reach “the youngest boys and girls.” While until mid-2024 it was the operators, and especially the health operators, who went house to house, now families are asked to take their children to the clinic. An important complication if we take into account that it is the mothers who take care of the newborns, and they cannot move alone or come into contact with other men.

The Taliban Health Minister was not in Afghanistan when the decision was announced. Until yesterday, Mawlawi Noor Jalal Jalali was in Beijing to participate in the World Conference on Traditional Medicine (sponsored by WHO), but she also visited the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Influenza Center. During the conference, Jalali sponsored a strengthening of bilateral cooperation between Beijing and Kabul, but he also stated that traditional medicine must be integrated into existing health practices. His ministry has just created a department of traditional medicine, charged with formulating guidelines to regulate the sector.