Health
NAC works to give all Afghans equal rights, and the opportunity to decide on their own lives and their own sexual and reproductive health. Women’s access to education, health care and work are fundamental to achieving the goal of good health and quality of life for all.
Annually, NAC’s Health Program educates and trains more than one thousand healthcare workers from provinces throughout Afghanistan, covering one-third of the country’s population. In 2020, despite the challenges of the pandemic, we were able to maintain most of our health initiatives with a continued focus on maternal and infant health, physical rehabilitation, gender equity, COVID-19 awareness campaigns, and distribution of healthcare equipment and supplies to rural and hard-to-reach communities.
NAC educates midwives, nurses, medical lab technicians, pharmacists and physiotherapists for hospitals and the private sector in 15 provinces. Additionally, NAC trains community health nurses and midwives to work in rural clinics and health centers in some of the most hard-to-reach and conflict prone communities in the country. Our main health initiatives are conducted in three regional institutes of health sciences (IHSs) – which fall under the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) – two of which we helped establish and develop. These partnerships were created to ensure continuity and sustainability as the staffing and programs in the three institutes will gradually be incorporated into government plans and budgets.
More than 250 young people are currently studying health sciences at the three state colleges supported by NAC. We are also working to strengthen the technical expertise of the colleges responsible for education in health sciences, while at the same time working to improve the administrative and professional competence within the Afghan Ministry of Public Health, both at national and sub-national levels.