Kabul: In June of last year, a group of female doctors and nurses traveled six hours to attend to victims of a massive earthquake that had just devastated eastern Afghanistan and killed more than 1,000 people. Lee, crossing mountains, dry riverbeds, and unpaved roads.

The men had received treatment when they arrived a day after the earthquake, but the women had not. A lack of female aid workers prevented women from leaving their tents to seek medical care or other assistance in Afghanistan's deeply conservative society.

According to Samira Sayed-Rehman of the aid organization International Rescue Committee, "the women were still bleeding." The women initially did not come out for treatment until they met local elders to inform them of the arrival of the women's medical team. She further added, “It is not just in times of need, women in many parts of the country do not go out to help.

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According to Syed-Rahman, this demonstrates the importance of female workers to humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan, and the fallout following the Taliban's ban on Afghan women working for NGOs last month.

The ban, which was made public on December 24, caused a widespread shutdown of many aid operations by organisations, which insisted they needed and will continue to need their female staff.

Aid organizations have warned that hundreds of thousands of people have already been harmed by the suspension of services and that if it continues, decades of war, deteriorating living conditions and economic hardships will have dire and deadly consequences for the population. Will spread Difficulty.

Since the Taliban took control of the country in August 2021, aid organizations and non-governmental organizations are preserving Afghanistan. The takeover caused the already fragile economy to freeze international financing, freeze currency reserves and be cut off from global banking. NGOs have stepped in and are providing everything from food supplies to medical care.

Following the ban, 11 important international aid organizations and some smaller ones suspended all their operations as they claimed they could not function without their female employees.

Many others have drastically cut back on their workload. According to UN Women, only 14% of 151 local and international NGOs surveyed after the ban were still operating at full capacity.

Most importantly, UN agencies are continuing their efforts to maintain the massive food lifeline that keeps millions of Afghans from going hungry.

Despite the ban, the World Food Program delivered food aid to 13 million people in December and the first week of January, or more than a quarter of the roughly 40 million people living in Afghanistan.

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Uncertainty exists regarding the implementation and enforcement of the ban. Some women have been able to work in the fields in some places. However, agencies claim that the impact is already substantial.

The International Rescue Committee, which has ceased all operations, estimated that between 24 December and 9 January, some 165,000 people were unable to access its health services.

It issued a warning that the ban would lead to an increase in illness and deaths, as well as further strain on Afghanistan's already "fragile, crumbling, and NGO-dependent" health care system.

30 mobile health teams, supported by more than 100 health facilities in 11 provinces, help save lives by traveling to remote areas in some cases that have never received any humanitarian aid.

Syed-Rahman of the mobile teams said that for some women, it is their only source of health care. “There is still a shortage of hospitals, clinics and other medical facilities in some areas of Afghanistan. The suspension has a significant impact on the amount of aid provided with each passing day.

IRC provides clean water, tents, money and other essential items to families displaced by war and natural disasters. A total of 6.18 million people are expected to receive assistance from IRC programs between 2021 and 2022, more than double the previous year.

Critical nutrition-related programs have been shut down, although most food aid has continued to flow.

Save the Children was one of the organizations to completely suspend all operations on 25 December. Thousands of people have been left without nutritional support as a result.

Prior to the ban's implementation, Save the Children provided nutritional support to nearly 32,000 adults and nearly 30,000 children, including porridge for women and babies and calorie- and vitamin-rich peanut paste for children. 

The halt has also prevented the cash transfers that 5,077 families depend on for food and other necessities. These families received one round of funds in December but none of the subsequent rounds that were scheduled.

Afghanistan has a high rate of child malnutrition, which has increased by 50% in the last year. According to U.N. statistics, approximately one million children under the age of five will likely experience the most severe form of malnutrition this year. 

According to the World Food Programme, nearly half of Afghanistan's 41 million residents will experience severe food insecurity between November 2022 and March 2023, including more than 6 million people who are on the verge of going hungry.

Children's lives in Afghanistan are in danger, according to Save the Children's Keyan Salarkia.

If you don't eat the proper foods in the first 100 days, it will affect the rest of your life, he claimed. According to him, in cases of severe acute malnutrition, "you start slipping into loss of life" after 10 days.

Salarkia claimed that almost everyone in Afghanistan will be impacted by the ban in some way. Additionally, Save the Children offered children's classes, vaccinations, and child protection. 

With the aid of its financial aid, families felt as though they were exempt from forcing their kids into labour or marriage. More kids will be married off or made to work without that support.

"We hope to see this reversed as soon as possible because the effects of this will be enormous."

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Salarkia recalled the effects when Save the Children temporarily halted operations due to security concerns in August 2021, following the Taliban takeover. 

Although the hiatus only lasted a few weeks, mobile health team members reported that some children they had previously seen frequently stopped showing up.