FAPs and PHCs

It is crucial to provide assistance to ill and wounded people as quickly as possible; to broaden access to medical facilities, reaching places far away from larger hospitals; to provide even the smallest settlements with medical equipment; and to develop healthcare competencies within communities. These are some of the core aims of EMERGENCY’s network of First Aid Posts (FAPs) and Primary Healthcare Clinics (PHCs). In Afghanistan, a lack of healthcare facilities and hazardous road conditions means that hundreds of thousands of people living in remote areas of the country are denied the right to be cured. 70% of the population is rural. Our network of FAPs and PHCs works to overcome these challenges.

Since 1999, EMERGENCY has worked to establish a network of over 40 FAPs and PHCs throughout the country, in order to provide prompt treatment to the population of the most remote areas and to regions lacking healthcare facilities; such as the Panjshir Valley and the Salang Pass, as well in the provinces of Kabul, Kapisa, Logar, Ghazni, Parwan, Badakhshan, and Helmand.

Local staff (trained by EMERGENCY) work alongside our international staff to provide primary healthcare and first aid. Patients suffering from serious conditions or injuries are stabilised and subsequently transferred to EMERGENCY hospitals by an ambulance service which operates 24/7. Half of patients treated in 2019 came from FAPs. As of June 2020, our network of FAPs and PHCs has seen over 4,564,868 clinical visits and has transferred 111,727 patients to hospital for specialist treatment.

In many of our Panjshir, Parwan, and Kapisa Primary Healthcare Clinics we have launched antenatal and postnatal care programmes, thanks to the presence of local midwives. In 2016 alone, these PHCs delivered over 13,000 obstetric and gynaecological consultations and allowed for the safe referral of more than 700 women. EMERGENCY is also part of the Afghan Ministry of Health’s national vaccination program, welcoming government vaccinators in some PHCs.

EMERGENCY’s presence in Afghanistan has enabled us to gain an understanding of the needs of local populations and, following specific requests made by local authorities, the scope of our activities in Afghanistan has gradually widened. The needs of local people led EMERGENCY to work in areas that are not confined only to war surgery. We have, for example, overseen a variety of projects, including: the prevention of leishmaniasis (an infectious disease); renovation of a school in Anabah; renovation of the Mirbachakot public gardens; and a social support programme for widows in the Panjshir Valley.

The right to treatment is a fundamental human right that must be guaranteed to all people, without any form of discrimination. For this reason, since 2001 we have offered healthcare assistance to inmates in Afghan prisons. Today, we manage and run five Healthcare Centres inside Kabul’s Pol-i-Charki, which with over 10,000 inmates is Afghanistan’s largest prison. Here we receive on average 4,300 visits a month, largely for infectious diseases or respiratory and digestive conditions, which are caused overwhelmingly by living conditions in the prison. Our staff also provide support to local authorities in the Healthcare Centres of the Kabul Government Jail, Investigation Department, Transition Prison, Women’s Prison, and Juvenile Rehabilitation Centre. Our activities in the Women’s Prison, interrupted in 2016, were resumed in January 2017. Where required, patients are referred to our Kabul Surgical Centre. As of December 2019, across these prisons we treated a total of 1,102,578 patients.

EMERGENCY also offers medical assistance within two Kabul orphanages.