They graduated in medicine with a thousand difficulties. Only they, from Kabul to the most remote provinces, are authorized to treat women. But there will be fewer and fewer, in a country where deciding to be a mother is a gamble

Jamila never loses her temper. He is 38 years old and has a robust physique. She wears a purple uniform and a hijab of a lighter tone. While completing the rounds of patients in the sub-intensive care unit of the Emergency hospital in Kabul, where he works as an anesthetistwrite everything down in a notebook. Since the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan in 2021, his work has become an act of resistance. The government of the Islamic Emirate has banned women from working in almost all sectorswith the sole exception of education and healthcare. Girls, however, can no longer attend high schools after the age of 12, much less universities, including medical schools. Women, therefore, can still be doctors or teachers, but they can no longer become one. «If education stops, perhaps in a few years there will be no more female doctors» says Jamila, «also because many have already run away to give a future to their children».

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Jamila and Afghanistan that erases women

Jamila dreamed of being a doctor since she was a childwhen in 1996 he followed his parents to Pakistan to escape the first Taliban emirate. Returning to Afghanistan, then under the control of the United States and allied countries (including Italy), she began working as a nurse, while continuing to study to graduate and then specialize in anesthesiology. After the withdrawal of international troops, she remained in Kabulwith an unemployed husband and two daughters: today, her salary is the family’s only support. «In recent times, men’s attitudes have also changed. Some time ago two government supporters pointed to me on the street and said: “Look, our leader hasn’t noticed that there is a woman outside the house.”” tells. «They don’t want women to be part of society. This, for me, is unacceptable.”

A collapsing healthcare system

Jamila’s story is the symbol of an emergency within an emergency, because this real gender apartheid is irreversibly compromising women’s health. After an apparently moderate start, the new Emirate has resumed its repressive pace. He suspended the Constitution and issued a series of decrees, subsequently collected in a 2024 document: 35 articles that touch on every aspect of women’s lives. Women, for example, are prohibited from meeting men who are not their relatives and are prohibited from traveling alone for a distance greater than 72 kilometers. To be treated, you need the authorization of a mahram, a male guardian: If there is no female doctor available, the mahram can deny permission for a male doctor to attend to her.

«A colleague of mine who works in another hospital told me that one day a Taliban politician showed up in the emergency room» continues Jamila. «He had accompanied his sick wife and asked for her to be examined by a doctor. Naturally there wasn’t even one, and he, very angry, took it away.” All of this adds to an already collapsing healthcare system. In Afghanistan, doctors are few, and among women the situation is even worse. According to an investigation by the platform “Conflict and Health”, only 18 percent of medical specialists and 29 percent of nursing staff are women. Half work in Kabul and its surroundings, the rest is scattered across the 33 provinces into which a nation of almost 43 million inhabitants is divided. The earthquake of August 31, in the eastern part of the country, showed the most serious consequences of this crisis: in many cases, rescuers refused to save the women under the rubble, as long as you don’t touch them.

Sakina, a miracle specialization

Sakina also works in the Kabul hospital. She is 29 years old, she is a resident in Anesthesia. She managed to pass the medical licensing exam shortly before the Taliban decided to suspend it. Her round face is covered by a hijab and a surgical mask, from which a pair of large glasses emerge. «That exam was the last chance of my lifebut now I’m afraid that new bans may arrive and prevent us from working” he says during a break in his shift in the emergency room. «I often talk about it with Jamila, and you tell me that the government can do whatever it wants with us».

Three thousand other women with medical degrees across the country have not had Sakina’s fortune. They were excluded from the qualifying exam and remain in limbo: they have a qualification, but cannot practice the profession. One of them is Anisa, who at 29 years old is a nurse in the Emergency hospital in Lashkar Gah, in the Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold. In the public park in front of the Emergency clinic some kids are playing volleyball; the few women who cross it walk quickly wearing the burqa. «In 2022 I went to Kabul to take the exam. They said that it had been suspended for us women and that they would inform us of a new date, but they never did».

Depression in Afghanistan is a taboo evil

Anisa considers herself lucky to be working. «Many of my classmates are locked up at home, depressed. I go over the books every day and stay here in the hospital. I still hope to be able to become a doctor.” Talking about depression, in a Muslim and conservative country, is taboobut Anisa isn’t the only one doing this. In the wards of Lashkhar Gah hospital there are other girls who have been excluded from medical school and work as nurses or health assistants. They all say that the situation is dramatic and talk, in a low voice, about one of their fellow students who committed suicide after the university closed. Many of them had thought about retiring by studying nursing, but in 2024 the Emirate has also closed public schools for women specializing in medical professions. It’s a paradox: three thousand graduates are ready to work, but can’t do it, while an ultra-conservative culture makes it practically impossible to treat women.

Dying in childbirth

A situation that becomes even more serious in the obstetrics and gynecological field, because no male doctor can assist a woman during a natural birthexcept to perform a cesarean section, since it is a surgical operation. And when there isn’t a doctor, especially in the most remote villages with mud and straw houses, very often unqualified nurses and midwives are used, with easily imaginable consequences. Just one figure is enough: in 2023 the maternal mortality rate in Afghanistan was 621 women per 100,000 births, one of the highest in the world; in Italy it was 3 per 100,000.

«Many pregnant women avoid coming to the hospital until the very end» explains Shrin, who has just become, at the age of thirty, head of gynecology at the Emergency hospital in Anabah, in the province of Panjshir. «They say they’re fine, even when that’s not the case. They do it for lack of money or because they don’t want to talk about it with their men and ask for authorization. They often come to us malnourishedafter traveling for hours, in such serious conditions that it is sometimes almost impossible to save them».

Reducing funding has consequences

The situation has worsened with the reduction of funds to the USAID agency decided by American President Donald Trump at the beginning of 2025. A drastic cut, which caused the closure of 422 hospitals across Afghanistan, compromising access to healthcare for over three million people. With humanitarian aid declining, healthcare collapsing and the marginalization of women doctors, the future of Afghan women hangs by a thread. “I can’t imagine what will happen in four or five years, when there will be no more doctors or nurses” says Aisha, a veteran nurse at the Emergency hospital in Kabul. «What will happen to women’s health? They will all die».

The names of the protagonists of this report have been changed for security reasons.

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