Dire state of health services in Paktika

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SHARANA (SW) – Paktika province in the southeast of Afghanistan has been reeling from dire state of health services for years now.

Officials at the public health department of Paktika have recently admitted that the health sector of this province is plagued with many problems. Hikmatullah Esmat, the director of public health of Paktika, told Salam Watandar that only in the provincial hospital of this province, two female doctors are working, and other female doctor positions are vacant in other hospitals since ages.

“We are still facing high deprivation in terms of providing health services. In all 24 hours, we have only three hospitals running across the big province, which are at a low level in terms of quantity and quality. How can these three hospitals provide 1,200,000 people of standard health services”, he asked.

Mohammad Yahya, head of the 150-bed hospital in Sharana city, Paktika center, says that 700 to 900 patients visit this hospital every day, but the facilities and the supply of medical services are nothing compared to the number of clients.

A number of patients say that due to the lack of hospitals in their districts, they have to travel for hours on difficult and broken roads to bring their patients to this hospital.

Shah Mir Khan, a resident of Gomel district, who took his patient to the Sharana hospital after an eight-hour car journey, told Salam Watandar: “There are no clinics, no male or female doctors in Paktika. We come here with difficulty, it is forty and a half hours away. We pay 15,000 to 20,000 for a car. We should be helped to build clinics in the districts and doctors to come.”

Halim Khan, a resident of Barmel district, said: “In the clinic, there is no female doctor who operates on women. That’s why we traveled for eight or nine hours, the road is broken. The hotel bill also increases and makes us suffer a lot. We ask the government to send a doctor there to operate on our patients and we can get rid of these problems.”

According to the information of the Public Health Department of Paktika, the number of beds in Sharana city hospital increased from 75 to 150 recently. But until now, the Ministry of Public Health has not provided the necessary facilities to this hospital.

Out of the 24 districts of Paktika, there is only one hospital each in the city of Sharana and the districts of Urgon and Khairkot, but even in these hospitals, complete and standardized services are not provided to patients.

ENDS

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