PAN (Translated by RAWA): Doctors of the central hospital of Uruzgan say that ISAF forces, without permission, shot photos of the female patients in the hospital and distributed expired medicines and biscuits. In reaction to these actions on November 26, the doctors of the central hospital went on a strike from treating the patients. Amir Ahmad, the head physician, told PAN that ISAF forces came to the hospital without permission went to the female section and took their photos. He added that taking women’s photos are again the Afghani customs and culture.      more...

IWPR: Residents of Mazar-e-Sharif suffer ill effects of polluted environment caused by urban expansion on land seized by warlords. A decades-old land grab has left Mazar-e-Sharif and much of the rest of Balkh province with little or no open areas or green spaces. While the government tries to cope with the nearly impossible task of reclaiming the land, residents are suffering the ill effects of living in a polluted environment devoid of trees and other vegetation. Mazar-e-Sharif has been losing its open spaces for decades, ever since the 1990s free-for-all that is known as the “era of the warlords”.      more...

Times Online: Nearly 4,000 new mental health cases were reported in the Armed Forces last year, according to Ministry of Defence figures. Women in the Forces also suffered from a higher rate of mental disorder than their male counterparts. Seven hundred servicewomen, some of whom will have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, were assessed last year as having a form of mental health illness. Of the 868 patients treated between October and December, the number of women with mental disorders was the equivalent of 8 per 1,000 compared with 4 per 1,000 men.      more...

Daily Times: The Taliban — blamed nowadays for just about all of Afghanistan’s ills — have officially been gone for nearly seven years, so why are conditions still so abysmal? While billions of dollars in aid have led to improvements in urban areas, where health facilities have been built and midwives trained, the overall maternal death figures have hardly changed. As one doctor told me: “A competent midwife or nurse would rather be out of work in Kabul than stuck in a remote village.” But most Afghans live in remote villages — those in Badakhshan can be reached only after a day’s bumpy ride on a donkey.      more...

PAN: More than 80% Afghans are faced by mental health problems due to long war and economic depravity, where as child stress has increased by 30%, compared to the past, said Dr. Khalid Mufti, a well known Psychiatrist here on Friday.      more...

IRIN: There are at least 200,000 children in Afghanistan living with permanent disability (physical, sensory and/or mental impairment), according to a 2005 survey by Handicap International - a non-governmental organisation supporting people with disability. Three decades of conflict have left the country strewn with landmines and other explosive remnants of war which kill and/or maim about 60 people, mostly children, each month, the International Committee of the Red Cross has reported.      more...

BBC News: In valleys and villages across Badakshan, a province located in the Hindu Kush mountain range, such stories are common. Maternal mortality, when a woman dies during or shortly after pregnancy, is believed to be the highest in the world here. According to statistics published by the UN in 2002, the province had the highest rate of mortal maternity ever recorded.      more...

IRIN: Population growth and the construction boom in Kabul over the past few years have resulted in the daily production of over 3,000 tonnes (109,500 tonnes annually) of solid waste. Some of this has been accumulating, causing serious health and environmental damage, according to Kabul Municipality. Medical doctors at Kabul’s Indira Gandhi Child Hospital (IGCH) said many children had picked up diarrhoea, dysentery or cholera from contaminated water. “Unsafe drinking water causes almost half of the diseases among children,” said Khalilullah Hodkhil, head of the IGCH.      more...

PAN: Almost sixty percent residents of Yaka-wolang district of central Bamyan province are facing starvation with some families reportedly relying on consumption of fodder, officials said Thursday. Muhammad Nasir Fayaz district chief of Yaka-wolang told Pajhwok Afghan News agriculture crop were affected by different infections the very reason faced the locals to hunger and posed great threat to their lives.      more...

IRIN News: More than six years after the ousting of the Taliban regime in 2001 when all women were denied the right to work and education, many women suffer domestic and social violence, discrimination and lack of access to unbiased justice and other services, women's rights activists say. At least 184 cases of self-immolation were registered by the AIHRC in 2007 against 106 in 2006.      more...

The Independent: Two-thirds of the women in Lashkar Gah's medieval-looking jail have been convicted of illegal sexual relations, but most are simply rape victims – mirroring the situation nationwide. The system does not distinguish between those who have been attacked and those who have chosen to run off with a man.      more...

The Chicago Tribune: In a country plagued by war and Islamic militants, by one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world, by malnutrition and starvation and even by locusts, AIDS has arrived. So far the Afghan government has officially identified only 435 cases of HIV — a small number, considering how many there are in neighboring countries—but international and Afghan health experts say there are likely thousands in Afghanistan.      more...

IRIN News: High food prices, drought, unemployment and lack of socio-economic opportunities are pushing some women and young girls in northern Afghanistan into commercial sex work, women’s rights activists and several affected women told IRIN.      more...

IRIN: Afghanistan has the highest fertility rate in Asia - 6.7 - which not only means the deaths of thousands of young mothers and infants every year but also poses long-term challenges, an expert of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) warned. “If the fertility rates are not reduced, Afghanistan’s population will more than double by 2050; from 47th most populous country, Afghanistan would become the 31st most populous country in the world,” Penumaka said.      more...

Quqnoos: More than half of the prisoners in Kabul's Pul-e-Charkhi jail are infected with tuberculosis, according to a study supported by the government. The study, authored by Dr Islam Saeed, found that about 55% of prisoners locked in the jail are infected with the deadly disease.      more...

PAN: Thousands of families in the south and north of Zaranj (capital city of Nimroz) are faced with shortage of drinking water and most of them have to buy water. More than 20 thousand people in the south of the city of Zaranj have been facing shortage of water for the past ten days. They demanded the solution for this problem urgently.      more...

Sky News: For many citizens of this, one of the poorest countries on the planet, life is still exceedingly tough and it is no exaggeration to say they have a daily struggle to survive. No jobs, no money and hope fading fast. "Afghanistan cannot be rebuilt with corrupt people," says Malalai Joya, expelled MP. "Our Government is undemocratic. We have a mafia system where drug lords and war lords are in power with the mask of democracy."      more...

The Associated Press: The girl was 11 when she was molested by a man with no legs. The man paid her $5. And that was how she started selling sex. Afghanistan is one of the world's most conservative countries, yet its sex trade appears to be thriving. Sex is sold most obviously at brothels full of women from China who serve both Afghans and foreigners. Far more controversial are Afghan prostitutes, who stay underground in a society that pretends they don't exist.      more...

The Globe and Mail: Since the repressive Taliban regime was toppled in late 2001, Afghanistan, which has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world, has vastly improved health-care services for mothers and their babies. However, in restive regions in southern Afghanistan, such as rural areas in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, many women say the situation has worsened.      more...

PAN: More than six million children in the country face problems such as smuggling, abduction, performing harsh jobs and get no education. He said that all governmental organizations should pay serious attention to administer justice for children, make education available, make health services accessible, make better their financial conditions and prevent the smuggling of children.      more...

AFP: YEARS of war saw Afghanistan’s forests levelled and its land polluted with fuel and mines, while more recent unchecked building and urbanisation is heaping new pressure on the environment, officials say.      more...

On Line Opinion: The Afghan occupation is in its seventh year, and resistance to the occupation has not abated. According to the US National Intelligence director the US puppet regime of Hamid Karzai exerts control over no more than 30 per cent of the country. The situation for women has not improved since the US led invasion, in fact quite the contrary.      more...

BBC Persian: Thousands of villagers of the Balkh province in North Afghanistan have settled in a desert near the Sholgira River after losing their cattle and cultivating lands. These villagers have come to this river (which is in the south of Mazar-e-Sharif) in groups from the villages of Alabraz so that “at least they have access to water”. They have either come on foot or on their animals like donkeys.      more...

PAN: Not observing the pause between births, early marriages, not going to healthcare centers, being in contact with other diseases are the causes of increase in the number of women with tuberculosis in the country. According to the information of the Ministry of Public Health, last year about 40,000 women had this disease and about 8,500 of them died. 70% of the people with this disease were women.      more...

Reuters: The prevalence of HIV is low in Afghanistan, but the potential risk factors for the spread of the disease remain high, the Public Health Ministry said on Monday. "But ... war, poverty, illiteracy, massive international and external displacement, the high level of poppy cultivation, drug trafficking and usage, the existence of commercial and unsafe sex, unsafe injection practices and blood transfusion are potential risk factors for its spread," the ministry said.      more...

Toronto Star: Three decades of war, millions of mines and unexploded ordinance (UXO) for children to trip over, suicide bombers, birth defects due to clannish intermarriage, congenital disabilities never corrected for lack of health care, ordinary ailments left untreated and the vast afflicted detritus accrued from preventable diseases such as polio, to say nothing of inestimable psychological trauma: Afghanistan is a wasteland of the mutilated and crippled.      more...

Reuters: When 19-year-old Fatima returned to her home in northern Afghanistan after years as a refugee in Iran, she struggled desperately to earn a living. She briefly found work with an NGO, before being let go, and then spent two months learning how to weave carpets, before the factory shut down and she was again out on the streets of Mazar-i-Sharif.      more...

Times Online: It is an unremarkable scene by Afghan standards – at first sight, just another sad monument to three decades of war. Yet this desolate, seemingly hopeless, place is the source of Afghanistan’s most recent chapter of violence – and possibly now of a brighter economic future.      more...

IRIN News: The killing and abduction of dozens of health workers in the past two years has prompted officials to shut down at least 36 health facilities in Afghanistan’s volatile southern and eastern provinces, depriving hundreds of thousands of people of basic health services, according to the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH).      more...

One Planet, BBC World Service: Doctors in Afghanistan say rates of some health problems affecting children have doubled in the last two years. Some scientists say the rise is linked to use of weapons containing depleted uranium (DU) by the US-led coalition that invaded the country in 2001.      more...

Reuters: About 1,600 Afghan women die in childbirth out of every 100,000 live births. In some of the most remote areas, the death rate is as high as 6,500. In comparison, the average rate in developing countries is 450 and in developed countries it is 9. Virtually everyone in Afghanistan can recount a story about a relative dying in childbirth, often from minor complications that can be easily treated with proper medical care.      more...

Reuters: Badakhshan, bordering Tajikistan to the north, is far from the fighting with Taliban insurgents in the south, but is still one of Afghanistan's poorest provinces. Those that fare worst live in the mountains where they are snowed in for up to six months of the year. In outlying districts such as Raghistan, Kohistan and Darwaz, there is little cultivable land and people survive on mulberries and other types of wild food, aid workers say.      more...

IRIN News: Saliha still mourns the death of her three-year-old daughter, Halima, who died due to severe diarrhoea at a hospital in Kunar Province, eastern Afghanistan, on 11 January. The child had drunk contaminated water which Saliha's family collects from a nearby river and uses for all purposes, including drinking, cooking and washing.      more...

IRIN News: The Safi fur and wool factory, in Herat city, western Afghanistan, has more than 350 female and 300 male workers who earn only 300 Afghanis (US$6) for their 48-hour, six-day week. The factory produces coats, jackets, hats and other garments for the European and North American markets. There are more than 1,500 women working in four such factories in Herat city.      more...

IRIN News: Flooding, armed conflict and population displacements are factors likely to increase malaria cases in Afghanistan this year, public health officials warn. "In 14 high-risk provinces the number of malaria patients will surpass that of 2006," Abdulwase Ashaa, director of the national anti-malaria department, told IRIN on 19 July in Kabul.      more...