Afghanistan: Inside Kandahar’s busiest medical facility, and the positive impact entrenched by ICRC

Imagine a medical facility with high traffic of 300 inbound patients each day, where the number of doctors and staff are disproportionate to the volume of patients. In addition, the country's Ministry of Health is facing an uphill challenge of providing sufficient personnel assistance to alleviate the circumstances at the medical facility.

That is what Kandahar's Mirwais Hospital is experiencing.

Situated in the southern region of Afghanistan, the hospital sees a high volume of patients and those wounded by war each day – most of which are from Kandahar and its neighboring provinces.

Fortunately, since 1997, the ICRC's sub-delegation in the region has been closely monitoring situations, and involved itself with Mirwais Hospital's operations by providing much-needed support including:

• Providing quality medicines to Mirwais Hospital
• Allocating quality medical equipment to the hospital
• Lobbying Afghanistan's Ministry of Health to increase medical personnel
• Providing training to medical staff through international experts, nurses/midwives and support staff e.g. including OBGYN, pediatrician, emergency specialist, reconstructive surgeon, senior medical officer and anesthetist
• Supplying the hospital fuel to keep generators operating

Here are how many lives were affected, and have received treatment in Kandahar's Mirwais Hospital between January – December 2019

Related articles:
Afghanistan: Keeping babies warm, beyond our activities
Afghanistan: Hospitals are under attack, and children are paying the price