A resident of Nangarhar’s remote Lalpoor district told Amu TV that he walked for three hours to take his child to a health center, only to be told that the facility could not provide treatment.
Bakhti Rahman, 45, a resident of the remote Rina Parchaw area, said he traveled along a rough, unpaved road to reach the district’s comprehensive health center with his young son.
After waiting for nearly an hour, Rahman said health workers told him they could not treat his son and that he would need to seek care at a private hospital.
Rahman said his family’s financial situation makes private treatment unaffordable, leaving him dependent on public health facilities that often lack necessary medicines.
“My child has severe diarrhea,” Rahman told Amu TV. “These days, malaria has increased, causing stomach pain and diarrhea in children. If the health center has medicine, I get it. If not, they give us a prescription to buy it from a pharmacy. Our biggest problem is that there is no medicine.”
Lalpoor is a remote district of Nangarhar along the border. The district lies about 50 kilometers northeast of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province.
Taj Mohammad, another Lalpoor resident, said patients who visit public facilities are frequently given prescriptions and told to buy medicine elsewhere.
“If we could afford to buy medicine outside, why would we come here?” Mohammad told Amu TV. “I brought my children here to get medicine, but they say no — the women must come, otherwise they won’t give us medicine.”
Hekmatullah, another resident, said several remote communities in Lalpoor lack health services entirely.
“In many remote areas of Lalpoor, such as Mullakhel, Rahmati and Pati Bina, there are no health services at all,” he told Amu TV. “This district is facing serious health problems.”
Residents called on Taliban authorities and aid organizations to address medicine shortages and expand access to health care in the district.
The complaints come as Afghanistan’s health system faces severe funding shortages. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, nearly 500 health facilities across Afghanistan have closed because of a lack of funding, cutting off access to health services for more than 4 million people.
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