Afghanistan

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Since 2002, striving to improve health outcomes for the people of Afghanistan.

  • Through the Urban Health Initiative (UHI), Jhpiego has strengthened 76 public and private health facilities, which have been pivotal in supporting more than 633,000 births; the project also reached more than 1.4 million women with family planning counseling.
  • UHI has established Urban Health Advisory Boards in each city, drafted a roadmap to develop an Urban Health Strategic Plan, established eight urban Family Health Houses for midwives to provide health services, supported mobile health clinics and midwifery outreach services through 48 community midwives, and established 209 urban health posts.
  • More than 221,000 children under one year old received the Penta 3 vaccine, 200,000 received the measles vaccine and 200,000 pregnant women received the tetanus toxoid vaccine. Also, more than 1.3 million children under five years old were screened for malnutrition, 331,000 received treatment for diarrhea and 189,000 received pneumonia treatment.
  • UHI played a critical role during the COVID-19 pandemic by delivering more than 2 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and providing vital oxygen support to the targeted health facilities.

Our Work in Afghanistan

Urban Health Initiative

The goal of the Urban Health Initiative (UHI), funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, is to improve health outcomes of people living in Afghanistan’s urban areas, particularly women and children and other vulnerable populations. To achieve this goal, UHI works to improve public and private health service delivery in the five urban areas of Kabul, Herat, Jalalabad, Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif by: 1) strengthening the Ministry of Public Health’s capacity and stewardship; 2) improving access to primary and secondary health care services; 3) improving the quality of public and private health services; and 4) improving people’s awareness of health care services and behaviors. UHI’s technical areas of focus are: reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health; communicable diseases, especially TB and vaccine preventable diseases; and nutrition. The Jhpiego-led consortium implementing this program includes Management Sciences for Health, Inc., CARE, BAO Systems, Project ECHO, Terre des Hommes, Viamo and the following Afghan organizations: Agency for Assistance and Development of Afghanistan, and Afghan Midwives Association.

Addressing Data Gaps in Causes of Perinatal Deaths in Humanitarian Settings Using Verbal and Social Autopsy Methods

Funded by Elrha though the Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) program, this study aims to assess the feasibility of using verbal and social autopsy methods for establishing causes of perinatal deaths in settings with large populations of internally displaced people, returnees and refugees in Afghanistan. The study is being conducted in two urban sub-districts in Kabul and Jalalabad and one rural sub-district in Kandahar province. This work is being implemented in partnership between the University of Sydney, Jhpiego, Afghanistan and the World Health Organization, Afghanistan.

The people we serve

Helpline for Healthy Mom and Baby

Kabul, Afghanistan – While visiting the Ahmad Shah Baba District Hospital in Kabul, Shafiqua Sadat met a Jhpiego-trained midwife who connected her to a service that would become beneficial for both her and her soon-to-be born baby girl. Shafiqua, 26 and visibly pregnant, had been keeping her sister-in-law company when midwife Rozina Sahak approached the

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Addressing Afghanistan’s Health Care Needs

At 35 weeks pregnant with her fourth child, Lailuma felt anxious—the memory of her third birth still haunting her. As with her previous deliveries, she had given birth at home. But the last labor had been unbearably long and tiring. Her baby seemed to have suffered too, being slow to develop and grow as her

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Jhpiego Partnership Sends 460,000 Face Shields to Health Care Workers

Global health leader Jhpiego, in collaboration with aerospace technology company Lighter Than Air (LTA), is providing 460,000 face shields for the personal protection of nurses, doctors, midwives and other frontline workers around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Having worked for four decades to save lives, improve health and transform futures in many of the

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Preventing maternal death worldwide

(This story first appeared in 2010). As a young doctor in Kenya, Harshad Sanghvi saw woman after woman arrive at the district hospital bleeding profusely after giving birth at home. Many lived in far-off villages where the local health clinic was little more than a one-room hut. Families would do what they could to get

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2020: Year of the Nurse and Midwife

Nurses and midwives play an essential role in ensuring a healthier world for everyone, everywhere. These skilled, determined health workers make up the majority of our health workforce. They are the backbone of our shared goals for universal health coverage, and the foundation to our efforts to extend primary health care services to all.

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Country Contact

Tel. 932 (0) 2214319

Kabul, Afghanistan

Current and Recent Donors

Arnow Family Fund

Elrha

UNICEF

USAID

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