The Cost of Lives: Count with Me

Written by Laetitia Stuchtey for Sahar Education

Every 2 hours, a woman dies of preventable pregnancy-related complications

Women in Kabul attend tailor training and receive a monthly stipend to feed their families in the Threads of Hope program.

Afghanistan is facing a humanitarian crisis. With casualties of conflicts, severe cases of malnutrition, and a lack of accessibility to health care. Especially for people living in hard-to-reach areas, and especially for women.

It’s been two hours since my last meal. I will get a bite and continue writing then.

Around 25% of the population in Afghanistan lives in remote or hard-to-reach areas and is therefore at a higher risk of dying of treatable illnesses.

With a decrease in UN funding, which created a funding shortfall of $294 million for the years 2024 and 2025, there are too few financial resources to tackle the rise in non-communicable diseases, and to fill in the large gap of trained healthcare professionals, which can be expected to grow with the new ban of women working in healthcare.

My packet of crisps is empty. I will go for a quick grocery run and continue then.

This was even more prominent this year in the flood response. The restrictions imposed on Afghan women humanitarian workers had negative consequences for the affected women and girls targeted by the response, according to the UN Report of the Secretary-General.

The repercussions of the Taliban’s laws on women are dire, with only 10% of women having access to primary healthcare services, 3.2 million children under five, and 840,000 pregnant and lactating women suffering from acute malnutrition.

It’s getting late. I’ll just write a few more sentences.

And the World Food Programme predicts a rise in the number of pregnant and breastfeeding women suffering from malnutrition to 1.2 million in 2025.

Malnutrition, as well as complications during birth without access to health care, costs the lives of children and mothers daily

Women learn to read and write in the

How many lives long did this writing take me?

With the Threads of Hope program Sahar Education aims to help women not only receive basic education and learn a trade for additional income, but it aims to improve women’s health as best as possible under the circumstances through education on health care and hygiene.

You can support us with a donation to the Threads of Hope program, and help to give a chance to women in Afghanistan.