World Health Day Celebration

07 April,2009

The challenges to the health sector in Afghanistan are many and include both manmade and natural disasters. The Ministry of Public Health is taking many steps to ensure that health facilities are built to standards which will hold up to natural disasters. Building standards are being developed to ensure that the structural integrity of health buildings remains intact in case of earthquakes and other natural disasters. Researches show that including earthquake risk reduction measures in the design and construction of all new clinics and hospitals adds only 4% to the initial cost.

Afghanistan is also a country prone to medical emergencies, climate change and extreme weather, especially in winters. Each year at the middle of fall all necessary emergency measures are prepositioned to more than half of all districts of Afghanistan before the arrival very harsh cold weather and closure of main roads.Emergency Response Plans are being developed with the assistance of the Afghan National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA) to enable emergency preparedness so that health facilities and staff will be prepared to deal with different types of disasters.

MoPH Afghanistan is very active in detecting, investigating, diagnosing and controlling of medical emergencies. We professionally and successfully managed 165 and 285 medical emergencies in 2007 and 2008, respectively. MoPH established Diseases Early Warning System in late 2006 and as of 2009 we have established 134 sentinel sites all over the country. These sites accomplish detection, investigation, diagnosis and control of all medical emergencies. In addition to that, MoPH requires all contractors to include earthquake risk reduction measures in the design and construction of health facilities. The safety of doctors, nurses, midwives, managers and all who are involved in health service delivery, no matter if they are working for MoPH or NGOs or UN agencies, are very important to the leadership of MoPH. We urge all Afghans to provide a safe environment for health providers and to protect health clinics and hospitals so that people in need of health care could have easy access to hospitals and receive quality care and services. These people provide health services during emergencies and mitigate sufferings of victims, wounded people and those who have been traumatized by disasters. MoPH salutes to the brave people who provide health services in all corners of Afghanistan, day and night, routinely and during emergencies said Dr. S.M. Amin Fatimie during the inauguration of the WHD Celebration. He also added that: MoPH is also grateful to WHO for selecting the slogan and the theme for this year and in helping MoPH to raise awareness of all health partners, especially Afghan people and donors, to ensure safety of health clinic, hospitals and health providers.

Peter Graaff, the WHO Representative for Afghanistan pointed out the responsibility of all contractors engaged in building clinics and hospitals to ensure that buildings are built to high standards which will enable patients to access services for many years. It is everyone responsibility to keep health clinics, hospitals and health providers safe so that they can provide life saving services to the people of Afghanistan. He also referred to a continuous increase in threats against health facilities and health workers in some parts of the country. As a result, the WHO has received reports of health facilities closing down due to a lack of health workers in addition to health facilities being burned down, leaving thousands of people without healthcare. WHO Afghanistan would like to take this opportunity to call on all actors involved in the conflicts to respect the neutrality of health clinics, hospitals and health providers. I would like also to thank all health workers, especially those living in remote and difficult circumstances, for their hard work and commitment to helping all people of Afghanistan said. Peter Graaff.