Local sources in Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul and Helmand say shortages of medicine, medical equipment and health services have left patients in these provinces facing serious difficulties, forcing many to travel to urban centres for treatment. According to these sources, the situation has increased treatment and travel costs for families.<\/p>\n
A number of patients in the districts of Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul said many health centres do not even have common medicines and basic equipment. They said patients are forced to buy medicines and needed supplies from the market at their own expense.<\/p>\n
One resident of Kandahar said: \u201cWe go to the health centre for treatment, but when there is no medicine there, they send us back to the market. Even for a common medicine, we have to pay out of our own pocket. We are not treated in government centres either because there is no medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Health sources say that as funding for organisations has declined, health services have been limited in many areas and patients in the districts are forced to go to Kandahar city and other major centres for medical care. Residents of remote areas of Uruzgan also say poor roads and high vehicle fares have placed additional pressure on patients and their families.<\/p>\n
Amir Mohammad, a resident of Chora district in Uruzgan, said: \u201cIn our district, medicine is absent most of the time. Before, they used to give the patient one or two tablets, but now even that is not available. We have to take the patient to Tarinkot or Kandahar. The road is bad, a vehicle is hard to find, and the fare is also high.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former officials of the Kandahar Pharmacists Association also said that despite increased imports of medicine from Pakistan through smuggling routes, medicine prices in the market have remained high. According to them, medicine is also not being distributed to patients in many government health centres.<\/p>\n
Local sources say the shortage of medicine and health services in southern provinces has become more serious after the activities of a number of international organisations and aid agencies in the health sector were restricted. Restrictions imposed by the Taliban administration on humanitarian and health activities, the shrinking working environment for women in the health sector, and other administrative and operational obstacles have also been cited as factors disrupting the continuation of health programmes.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the closure of Afghanistan-Pakistan border crossings since October last year, following military and political tensions between the Taliban administration and Islamabad, has also complicated the supply of medicine. Previously, more than 70% of the medicines used in Afghanistan were imported from Pakistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Medicine shortages in southern Afghanistan are forcing patients to travel to cities for costly treatment as health services remain limited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21825,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-important-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}