During more than 27 years of wars in Afghanistan more than 1.5 million people have been killed and nearly four million refugees created as a consequence of conflicts.

Many others have become victims of the widespread availability of firearms, or the countless landmines buried around the country. Others are victims of a modern day hazard: road traffic accidents. Unofficial figures speak of five children per day killed in road accidents in or around Kabul. Malnutrition, insufficient access to safe water, outbreaks of tuberculosis and malaria increase  pressures on an insufficient national health system.

EMERGENCY’s involvement in Afghanistan began in 1999, with the first project being a Surgical Center in Anabah, a village in the Panjshir Valley.  At the time this region was under the control of Commander Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance.

Two years later, EMERGENCY built a second Surgical Center in Kabul, which was then under Taliban rule.  

In June 2003, EMERGENCY opened a Maternity and Gynecology Unit, adjacent to the Surgical Center in Anabah. This facility provides free of charge qualified assistance in an area with one of the highest mother and infant mortality rates in the world.

In 2003 EMERGENCY built a hospital in Lashkar-gah, in Helmand, a Pashtun province where there was a total lack of specialized surgical facilities.

Throughout the country EMERGENCY has created a network of 28 First Aid Posts and Health Care Centers in order to guarantee rapid treatment of patients and, if necessary, their transfer to a hospital.

Since 2001 EMERGENCY has been providing health care to some of the country’s prisons as well as running a cooperative to produce carpets, offering employment to women in the Panjshir Valley.

Since 1999, EMERGENCY has treated more than 2 million people in Afghanistan.