MSF suspends Afghan maternity ward after killing of pregnant women

Medical nonprofit Medecins Sans Frontieres announced it is suspending its maternity ward operations in a Kabul, Afghanistan, hospital in the wake of the systematic killing of 16 women in the ward. All the women were mothers or soon to be. Three of them were killed in the delivery room, along with their unborn babies. Two young children and six other people were killed in the May 12 attack.

Dasht-e-Barchi Hospital, one of MSF’s largest projects in the world, delivered nearly 16,000 babies in 2019 alone, the group said. MSF had run its maternity ward since 2014. The group said they have chosen to leave the hospital rather than face another attack against its staff and patients.

“Today, we have to accept reality,” Thierry Allafort-Duverger, MSF’s general director, said. “Higher walls and thicker security doors won’t prevent such horrific assaults from happening again. To remain would mean to factor such loss of human lives as [part of the equation] for our activities, and this is unconceivable.”

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack. The Taliban denied it was involved, and the area has seen multiple attacks from the Islamic State. Human Rights Watch called the killings a war crime.

“We were aware that our presence in Dasht-e-Barchi carried risks,” said Allafort-Duverger. “But we just couldn't believe that someone would take advantage of the absolute vulnerability of women about to give birth to exterminate them and their babies.”

Located in a poor, mainly Hazara neighborhood in Kabul, the hospital serves a vulnerable population that has no access otherwise to essential medical care. The closure of the maternity ward is expected to affect more than a million people, according to MSF.

A spokesman for Afghanistan's health ministry, Akmal Samsor, said he hoped MSF would reconsider its decision, BBC reported.

More than 70 MSF personnel and patients have been killed in Afghanistan over the past 16 years, the group said. In 2015, U.S. airstrikes destroyed an MSF trauma hospital in the northern city of Kunduz, killing 42 people, including 22 patients and staff. In 2004, five MSF employees were shot and killed while driving in northwestern Badghis province.

“Those paying the price when armed groups attack medical facilities are not just the patients and medical staff but all Afghans, including children, who are denied essential care when hospitals cannot function,” said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at HRW. “In the midst of a pandemic, Afghanistan needs its medical facilities more than ever.”