{"id":376,"date":"2025-09-22T00:29:21","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T00:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaajmag.com\/?p=376"},"modified":"2025-10-15T05:00:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T05:00:08","slug":"we-want-female-doctors-afghans-said-after-the-kunar-earthquake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaajmag.com\/en\/376\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe Want Female Doctors,\u201d Afghans Said After the Kunar Earthquake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Despite a widespread ban on women working in Afghanistan, three female doctors in eastern Afghanistan stepped up to save lives after a devastating earthquake.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On September 1, a 6.0-magnitude earthquake shook eastern Afghanistan, killing more than 2,200 people and injuring thousands. Barred from studying at universities and working under Taliban restrictions, women surgeons, nurses, and midwives, many of them volunteers, stepped forward in Nangarhar and Kunar\u2019s overcrowded hospitals to fill the gaps of a collapsing health system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By: Farahnaz Forotan and Amina Azizi – Visuals by Kaaj Magazine<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were only three women surgeons. On the first day of the earthquake, we performed more than twenty surgeries,<\/em>\u201d said Dr. Shakila Zaheer, a surgeon in Nangarhar\u2019s local hospital in Afghanistan. The region is one of the most densely populated in the country with more than 3 million people living in the region. According to multiple UN agencies, most of the victims of the earthquake were women and children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That morning Nangarhar\u2019s women\u2019s surgical ward started early and dozens of severely injured patients poured into the hospital. The hospital has two operating rooms and 49 beds. That morning more than 140 people, injured during the earthquake, lined the halls. This was more than Zaheer had ever seen in her seven years of service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Shakila Zaheer stands at the forefront as one of the most experienced surgeons at Nangarhar Regional Hospital in Jalalabad. Photo: Kaaj Magazine \/ Nangarhar, Jalalabad<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was one of the most painful days of my career,\u201d<\/em> she said. Zaheer described how dozens of women and children were rushed in, even as the aftershocks of the quake were still shaking the walls. She described the scene as “a flood of severely wounded people which left no space to breathe in the hospital\u201d. \u201cWe had so many patients in critical condition that we pulled out the carpets from the offices, laid them on the floor and treated them on the floor,\u201d<\/em> Zaheer  said. The images remain vivid for her,  broken arms, shattered legs, faces torn by falling debris, children sobbing in pain and fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In those hours, she said exhaustion was not an option. For three days straight, Zaheer and her two colleagues, Dr. Lima Akbari and Dr. Razia Hassan, treated patients non stop. All three women had once walked the halls of Nangarhar Medical University in Jalalabad, halls now closed to women under Taliban rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were exhausted,\u201d<\/em> Zaheer said, \u201cbut all of us, from the volunteers to the surgeons and nurses, had made a commitment: as long as we had strength, we would save lives.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The women said they felt the pressure of being the only surgeons in the region and worried about the many patients they couldn\u2019t get to, \u201cIt is far too few for such a large population,\u201d Zaheer said.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kaaj spoke with Dr. Rahila, a volunteer who rushed to the hospital in Kunar in the first days after the earthquake. \u201cMen came and insisted their wives be treated only by female doctors,\u201d<\/em> she said. Deeply shaken by the scale of the tragedy, Rahila admitted she did not know how to reach all the patients, as the number and severity of the wounded were overwhelming. \u201cWomen who were conscious asked for female doctors,  but there were so few of us that we simply could not reach everyone.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n