Women on the Frontline of a Collapsing Healthcare System
A six-part series hosted by Laura Cappon.
Adaptation and production by Carlo Annese.
Editing assistant: Federico Caruso.
Cover illustration by Gianluca Costantini.
With thanks to Emergency, to Davide Preti, and to all the local and international staff working on projects in Afghanistan.
Available on all podcast apps and on corriere.it.
Since taking back power in Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban have banned women from attending university and have shut down public training schools for nurses and midwives. Today, you can still be a woman doctor, but you can no longer become one, and those who remain are fewer and fewer, making it practically impossible to provide healthcare that was already on the verge of collapse.
But if the Taliban continue to rule, how will women be able to get medical care and give birth safely? And what will their future look like?
To answer these questions, Laura Cappon, a special correspondent for RAI’s in-depth news programmes, travelled for ten days through hospitals in Kabul and in the provinces of Panjshir and Helmand. She spoke with the women doctors and nurses who, despite everything, continue to do their jobs, and with their patients. All of them told her that the situation is dramatic. It is an emergency within an emergency, in a country forgotten after twenty years of war and the withdrawal of the United States and its allied countries, including Italy.
Episodes
1. Gender Apartheid
Women are the ones paying the highest price for the collapse of Afghanistan’s healthcare system. The bans on education and training imposed by the Taliban government have triggered an exodus of women doctors from the country. Some of them, however, have decided to stay. Like Jamila, who works among the… Listen »
2. Role Models
In the intensive care unit of Emergency’s hospital in Kabul, it’s almost time for the doctors on duty to change shift. It’s the right moment to meet Sakina, a 29-year-old doctor who managed to graduate just before the Taliban arrived and shut down universities and training schools… Listen »
3. Broken Dreams in Lashkar Gah
After returning to power, the Taliban also banned the exams required to practise medicine. As a result, three thousand women with medical degrees have never been able to obtain their licence. Anisa is one of them. She is 29 and, unable to work as a doctor, she is employed as a health assistant at Emergency’s hospital in… Listen »
4. Studying On, Against All Odds
In December 2024, the Taliban also closed the specialist public schools for nurses and midwives. But for women who refuse to give up, a small window remains open: training courses run by humanitarian organisations which, still today, in small numbers and with great effort, help new healthcare workers to train. Listen »
5. Giving Birth Under the Taliban
Shirin is the head of the Gynaecology Department at Emergency’s hospital in Anabah, in the Panjshir province. She decided to remain in the country despite the Taliban’s return to power, and she has a crucial mission: to ensure women can give birth safely. In Afghanistan, maternal deaths in childbirth are still extremely high. According to the World Health Organization… Listen »
6. The Girls of Tomorrow
Mina is 35, a midwife, and head of the obstetric emergency room at Emergency’s hospital in Anabah, in the Panjshir province. She tells of the daily challenge of caring for mothers and women in labour in a context where the issue of access to healthcare is intertwined with another emergency: that of… Listen »
