One Midwife Against the Crisis: Atifa and the Battle for Afghanistan’s Mothers
For twelve years, a small family-health clinic in Melmastok, a remote village in Afghanistan’s central Daikundi province, survived everything: Taliban offensives, the withdrawal of foreign troops, and the fall of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul in 2021.
Through it all, 34-year-old midwife Atifa—who, like many Afghan women, uses only her first name—helped mothers deliver babies, treated childhood fevers, and stitched together a fragile sense of safety for the community’s women and children.
But in July, the clinic’s doors shut for good. The midwife’s shelves, once stocked with basic supplies, now sit empty. Atifa has been forced to turn women away. She does not mince words about what comes next.
“Mothers and children will die,” she said.
The closure is part of a sweeping collapse of community health care across Afghanistan. Washington, long the largest donor to Afghan humanitarian efforts, slashed support this year, citing concerns that the Taliban were interfering with aid. The cuts have rippled through U.N. and partner organizations, forcing the suspension or closure of 422 health facilities nationwide by August. In Daikundi alone, 21 family-health clinics—locally known as Family Health Houses—have been shuttered.
For the families they served, the consequences are already catastrophic.
Mothers waiting to see Gul Chaman at a clinic in Daikundi’s Waras Valley
In April, Ali Hassan rushed his wife Mariam, 38 and heavily pregnant, to their nearest Family Health House in Taiko after she went into sudden pain. Hours passed before the family learned the truth: the midwife had been laid off, and the clinic closed. Desperate, they began the five-hour drive to a district hospital. Mariam and her baby died before arrival.
“There was a chance we could have saved both mother and child—or at least the mother [if the clinic had been open],” said Sediqa, a midwife at the hospital.The hospital’s director, Eztaullah Alizada, was blunter: “By the time they arrive, they are close to dying.”
Globally, the maternal health trajectory is moving in the opposite direction. The World Health Organization reports maternal deaths have fallen by 40% since 2000.
Yet Afghanistan risks becoming a tragic exception. Fragile and conflict-affected states already account for nearly two-thirds of all maternal deaths worldwide, according to the WHO.
“All of us are afraid we or our children might die,” said Kurshid, a 30-year-old pregnant woman in Daikundi.
Atifa, a midwife in Daikundi attending to a patient
The impact is felt far beyond labor wards. The Family Health Houses provided routine care for children with coughs, diarrhea, or malnutrition—the kind of everyday illnesses that become deadly without treatment.
Mariam, a 24-year-old mother of three in Daikundi, recalled losing her 5-month-old daughter last year. With no money for a taxi, she set out on foot for the nearest clinic, an hour away. Her baby died before she arrived. Now, with her local clinic shut down, the nearest health center is more than twice as far, even by car.
“The winter,” she said quietly, “is even scarier.”
The closures have also stripped midwives of their livelihoods. Gul Chaman, who worked in Waras Valley, now sits at home, her savings dwindling in a broken economy.
“I’m getting weaker and older every day,” she said. “I’m afraid for me and my children’s future.”
Atifa shares that fear. Without supplies, she cannot even work privately. She recalls the case of Soghra, a woman in her 30s who begged for help as her due date approached. By the time labor came in July, Atifa’s clinic had closed. She referred Soghra to a facility two hours away by car. The baby did not survive.
“I don’t know if it happened on the way or at that clinic,” Atifa said, her voice trailing off. “But she lost her child.”
In a country where international headlines often focus on geopolitics, women like Atifa say the silent emergency is unfolding in places the world rarely sees—remote valleys, unpaved roads, households where fear replaces hope. What was once a fragile lifeline has been severed.
And for Afghanistan’s mothers, the cost is counted in lives that might have been saved.
