AFGHANISTAN - Oct. 28 - Experts Report 'Catastrophic' State Of Health.

A report in The IHT quotes Kabul officials and foreign health experts as saying: "The most comprehensive surveys of medical facilities and maternal deaths ever conducted in Afghanistan show that the country's 25 million people rank among the world's least healthy and are in great need of medical aid... Particularly hard hit by 23 years of war, civil strife and Taliban misrule are Afghan women, who are experiencing... 'catastrophic' death rates associated with pregnancy and childbirth - the world's worst, doctors say. Many Afghans in the most remote rural areas have never even seen a doctor, nurse or paramedic. Many rural clinics have no electricity or running water, and lack basic medical instruments. Medical schools in Kabul and Jalalabad have no textbooks, teaching slides or anatomical charts; the Taliban often burned them because of their graphic depiction of the human body. Some hospitals in Kabul and other major cities lack microscopes and operating tables". The report quotes Pres. Karzai as telling US Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, who visited Kabul this month: "We need to rebuild our health system entirely after 20 years of neglect". Thompson said he was shocked by the challenges facing the country's 4-month-old government. He said: "It's hard to appreciate, unless you've seen for yourself, the extent to which war and the Taliban have devastated this land and its medical infrastructure. The Afghans have nothing; they need virtually everything". He signed a co-operation agreement with the Health Ministry and vowed to establish a medical clinic in Kabul to train more workers in maternal health and basic health care skills.