BBC is reporting on women dying in childbirth in Afghanistan

[endofthelinefinally]

I remember saying that this would happen. No training for female doctors and midwives, no antenatal care, no help in childbirth. It is absolutely barbaric.
Last week we were reading about women being left to die in the rubble after the earthquake because the male rescuers wouldn't touch them.
Just horrific.

I agree, it's horrific. It beggars belief that male earthquake rescuers wouldn't touch female victims. Awful awful.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgqdneev1no

The BBC blames Trump.

You have to read right to the end to get to the part where women are no longer allowed to train as nurses and midwives. And if male medics aren't allowed to touch them, then obviously women and their babies will die.

Im sure that aid cuts have contributed( perhaps hastened?) deaths but I really think the decision making of the taliban and the removal of women’s rights have made it inevitable. If woman can’t be treated by men and women can’t train then inevitably there isn’t any care.

I'm blaming the Taliban's interpretation of a religion rather than Trump.

I thought the bbc report was quite unfair to the US in blaming them cutting aid for these issues and not really tackling the taliban’s decisions or the leader they spoke to’s avoidance of the cause

The erasure of women in Afghanistan is heartbreaking.

What can we do?? I feel powerless.

They wouldn’t need aid in this area if the Taliban let women train to be doctors and midwives. This is a simple thing a country can do for themselves

There was an earlier thread about this, ie the Taliban stopping women from being able to train in any area of health.

Added to which, as in the earthquake, men cant touch women, so cant rescue them from earthquakes or (even if they have the skills) assist in childbirth.

I wonder if women are able to "learn" from other women midwife skills or whether those too have been forbidden.

I was just about to post this.

I can't get over their headline blaming Trump and not the fucking taliban.

Seriously? Trump is their bad guy and not the terrorist organisation that bans women from public, bans women from an education and bans women from getting help from male doctors. Thats their angle?!

Fuck the BBC.

On the existing thread about the earthquake there is a link to a report that UN closes aid centres because of Taliban restriction on female staff https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5404023-earthquake-in-afghanistan?page=2

What good is aid if men can’t treat women and women can’t be trained to treat women? Is this aid supposed to take the form of female foreign aid workers, who will have to attempt to live under constant threat from Taliban, and are unlikely to be able to deliver care to women anyway? Aid will only prop up the Taliban regime longer and make it even more difficult for others to challenge them. The only possible useful interventions could be covert online education/ paper resources for women and girls in basic first aid and maternity care/midwifery and finding men in Afghanistan who are brave enough to disseminate this info amongst women secretly.

I do think this is one of a series of articles about impacts of aid cuts. I have read other stories which have a very similar format about cuts to HIV programs. I also believe if the Taliban weren’t such a bunch of utter arseholes then there’d be much more international aid.

There are some.secret training programmes running underground/ online. But obviously they will be very limited.

What an unforgivable attack on women, and children.

One hope is that non-Taliban Afghans will resist.

Yes, I was taken aback at the BBC's focus on blaming Trump, but the situation is much more complicated. I think the British and the Americans abandoned Afghanistan in a dreadful way and leaving lists of names of translators was appalling. Yet, how can financing clinics help if women cannot work in them?

The Taliban not only refuses to allow women to train in health care, they have also threatened the remaining female doctors with prison and made it almost impossible for them to work. The lack of health care for women is entirely intentional rather than a side effect of their misogyny.

Agree. He kept saying it was an internal matter. The question he should have answered was why were women not training as midwives, which is a traditional female occupation, as is nursing. Creep, basically, who gives sod all for women. However, the men who appeared whose wives had died seemed to want clinics and care for their wives - though they blamed the US, of course, not the taliban (In some defence (I suppose) the taliban are likely to come and kill you for complaining and the US are not).
It does seem that the aim is to make women's lives as short, miserable and brutish as possible - not a tenet of Islam afaik.

I think there are 2 different things. But both of which impact on women.

Internationally the cuts by Trump to overseas aide projects have impacted far more on women. Probably because in all countries women are always last in the line, not just health but other issues.

I think there was a thread a short while ago about the impact of these cuts on women world wide, eg women in Africa loosing drugs in relation to HIV/Aids.

So in this situation if the clinics only existed through US money then it is right that these cuts are blamed.

But not forgetting had the US cuts not been made they may well have had a nice clinic, but thanks to the Taliban no women to staff it.

Added to which there is, and apprently increasing level of malnutrition in Afghanistan, and sadly an increase in child deaths from malnutrition.

There was an item on Radio 4 PM today about it. Cant find a clip of it online.

The problem is that nobody is taking out the Taliban from within. They literally have a million American firearms and hundreds of armoured Humvees left behind by the US.

I appreciate this may be a daft question given these are secret but are there any charities I can donate to who may be able to route funds into supporting efforts like this?

A lot of this info is one earlier threads. Try searching.

No time to find links, but yesterday the news was reporting that the internet connection in one region has been cut.

And today that it looks like this is happening across the country.

I wonder if they too have now heard about online support for women.

I read this. It annoyed me that the US is blamed. Nope - it's the Taliban.

I don't think anything is fixing Afghanistan in our lifetimes sadly.

Afghanistan bans female authors from university curricula
At least 679 titles blacklisted, including texts on human rights, women’s rights and Western political thought.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/19/afghanistan-bans-female-authors-from-university-curricula