MSF withdraws from Dasht-e-Barchi after deadly attack on maternity ward

The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced that it has decided to end activities and withdraw from Dasht-e-Barchi hospital in Kabul, the MSF said. 

In a statement released on June 15, the organization said that the decision was taken following the brutal attack on our maternity wing on 12 May, in which 16 mothers were systematically shot dead. An MSF midwife, two children aged 7 and 8, and six other people present at the time of the attack were also killed.

“The decision comes with the understanding that while no information has emerged about the perpetrators or motive of the assault, mothers, babies, and health staff were the deliberate targets of the attack and that similar attacks may occur in the future,” the organization said.

“We have to accept reality… to remain would mean to factor in such loss of human lives as a parameter of our activity, and this is unthinkable,” said Thierry Allafort-Duverger, MSF Director-General.

 “We were aware that our presence in Dasht-e-Barchi carried risks, but we just couldn’t believe that someone would take advantage of the absolute vulnerability of women about to give birth to murder them and their babies,” says Thierry Allafort-Duverger, MSF Director-General. “But it did happen.”

“Today, we have to accept reality: higher walls and thicker security doors won’t prevent such horrific assaults from happening again,” says Allafort-Duverger. “To remain would mean to factor in such loss of human lives as a parameter of our activity, and this is unthinkable.”

MSF further said that it was looking into ways to support local initiatives aimed at improving access to healthcare as the security conditions have forced the organization to withdraw from Dasht-e-Barchi.

The end of MSF’s activities in the maternity wing of Dasht-e-Barchi hospital is a necessary but painful decision, fraught with consequences for more than one million people who live in the area. Most of them are from the Hazara community, a historically marginalized and poor population, many of whom were displaced by decades of conflict.

MSF has been working in Dasht-e-Barchi in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health since November 2014, providing free-of-charge maternity and neonatal care in one of the most densely populated areas of Kabul.