Save Afghan Women & Children with Health Care

AIL runs a comprehensive Health Program that encompasses health treatment, health education and health training. Workshops that relate to pregnancy and childbirth are highly regarded and quickly fill up once posted. Women know that the country has an alarmingly high rate of maternal death and injury and infant mortality. Women want to do the right thing to be safe, once they know what that is. AIL has given two Reproductive Health Workshops for 80 women in the last 2 months with the total for the year now at 285 women trained.

AIL’s 3 hour Expectant Mother Workshop (EM) is another quick and easy way for these women to learn what they need to know. The topics covered include: antenatal and postnatal care, safe childbirth and infant care, child spacing and breast feeding as well as the importance of keeping in touch with clinics or Community Health Workers. The workshops are held in more remote areas where women have few medical options. The women are under  AIL clinic observation and report back with their newborn for 3 months following birth.

One participant said, "This is the first time that we attended such a workshop and this is the first organization that gives workshops like this for the pregnant women in our area. This shows AIL really cares and reaches out to all people. At the end of the workshop we received a nice new baby kit that contained a hat, pinafore, swaddling, band swaddling, shirt, sun suit, pads and diapers, panties and soap.” So far in 2014, AIL has given 13 EM Workshops for 340 women (170  pregnant) and remarkably all of the births recorded so far were at clinics rather than a risky home birth situation. In addition to its focused workshops, AIL has provided thousands of women with reproductive health education through the AIL clinics and Community Health Workers posts.

Thank you for your interest in Afghan women’s health issues. We have included Creating Hope International’s 2014 newsletter which contains information on AIL’s work. We hope that you will take a moment to read through it.

• Newsletter2014_FINAL_v2.pdf (PDF)