11 Oct 2010 - United Nations health agency World Health Organization (WHO) pledged to continue working with the Government so as to reach remote populations with increased health services in the under-resourced province of Bamyan in central Afghanistan.

A delegation of WHO staff, led by WHO Country Representative Peter Graaff, traveled to Bamyan province to monitor the quality and effectiveness of their work.

Most parts of the mountainous regions of this province remain inaccessible for long periods during the year because of harsh winter conditions.

“This hampers health service delivery and puts the lives of hundreds of thousand of Afghans at risk,” said a WHO press release.

“There is a real need to turn the spotlight on the good quality humanitarian work that is able to take place in Bamyan, given the relatively secure situation in a country that is otherwise conflict-affected,” said Graaff.

WHO’s health interventions in Bamyan include the pre-positioning of emergency medical supplies to district hospitals to cover the basic health needs of people living in the province’s remotest districts.

“We want to make sure the areas cut off by winter should also have access to medical services,” Peter Graaff said.

Ewaz Ali, a resident of Qarghanato village in the west of Bamyan city, shared his story with UNAMA: two years ago during the winter he had to take his pregnant wife to the clinic near his village because of some pregnancy complications.

He says that because of the lack of medicines, doctor referred his wife to the provincial hospital.

“My wife was sitting on a donkey and then we walked for 3 hours in snowfall to reach the nearest point where a car could pick us up. The roads were blocked because of snow,” Ewaz said.

WHO officials say that the pre-positioned medicines will be enough to serve the basic health needs of 50,000 people for the duration of the coming winter months.

Meanwhile, WHO also supports local income-generating activities that aim to economically empower local communities and in turn enable them to lead healthy lives.

The Basic Development Need (BDN) programme runs in two districts of Bamyan province for 1,600 families.

Mohammad Yasin is a farmer in Hyderabad village who has benefited from this programme.

“I have nine children and it was very hard for me to earn enough from my land to afford daily expenses, I also had to stop my sons for going to school so they could help me in farming,” Mohammad said.

“But now after this (BDN) programme, I have opened a shop and bought cattle for my family. I am happy and have enough money to buy school books for my children,” he added.

According to Graaff, the BDN programme is a pilot project in Bamyan to show the world that with very little money the local communities can be economically supported and “that is what the Afghans need.”

By Jaffar Rahim, UNAMA