Giving birth in Afghanistan is more dangerous than war. Inside MSF’s life-saving ‘baby factory’
Giving birth in Afghanistan’s Khost Province is a daunting prospect. Most women avoid travelling on roads that are dangerous after dark and some arrive at the hospital minutes before delivery and leave a few hours after
The mother was admitted at 9.30am, the birth recorded at 9.35. Women often arrive in extremis at the Medecins Sans Frontieres maternity hospital in southeast Afghanistan, one of the most active in the world, with more than 60 babies born daily.
The early hours of the morning are the most feverish for the hospital – affectionately known by the NGO as “the baby factory” – just a stone’s throw from Pakistan’s tribal areas, in Khost Province.
The Taliban are active in the region and roads are often dangerous after dark, so when 25-year-old Asmad Fahri felt her contractions begin at night she knew she would have to wait until daybreak to begin the three-hour journey to the hospital.
Finally she is resting, her infant tightly swaddled and asleep between her knees.
On average new mothers are kept in the ward for six hours, but she has asked to leave after just three, to ensure she reaches home before darkness falls again.
Sometimes the mothers have to travel for days, in pain and bleeding, over unpaved, insecure roads in carts or by whatever mode of transport they can find.
