Anabah Maternity Centre

It seemed like madness, but instead…

“A Maternity Cente in Afghanistan? You are crazy”. We heard this many times when, in 2003, we opened the Anabah Maternity Centre in the Panjshir Valley, northern Afghanistan. Yet the need for a similar structure was and is still evident: in Afghanistan, maternal mortality is 99 times higher than that recorded in Italy, the child mortality rate 47 times higher.

It might have seemed like ‘madness’ to some, but in the years since its founding, the Maternity Centre has proven to be a necessary and fundamental structure for maternal-infant health in the area. Over 274,000 women have visited, over 46,000 children have been born there, our patients’ thanks and the many women who come from far away just to give birth to their children: all of this is testimony to the importance of our Centre.

A Unique structure in the region

The Anabah Maternity Centre is the only specialist and completely free facility in a very large area, inhabited by at least 250,000 people. At the Centre, EMERGENCY offers gynaecologic, obstetric and neonatal care and a prenatal care service that allows us to monitor pregnancies and promptly treat any illnesses.

Widespread assistance in the Valley

To increase the scope of our intervention, an international obstetrician and an Afghan obstetrician conduct check-ups for pregnant women and offer a follow-up of infants directly at the First Aid Posts and Health Centres that EMERGENCY manages in the Panjshir Valley.

Training for Women

The importance of the Centre is not limited to prevention and health care: our Maternity Centre in Anabah is also a training centre for Afghan staff – women only, more than 40 of them – who, working every day in contact with the International staff, receive practical and theoretical training. Because our goal, in the end, is to not be needed one day.

The Expansion of The Centre

On December 8, 2016, we inaugurated the new Maternity Centre.

With over 500 births a month, the old Centre was becoming too small to meet the needs of the population. For this reason, in September 2015, we started constructing a new new block, which would have four delivery rooms, two operating rooms, intensive and sub-intensive neonatal care, intensive care for women with complications during childbirth, an outpatient clinic , a gynaecology department, an area for follow-up and one for labour.

In agreement with her family, the new Maternity Center is dedicated to Valeria Solesin, an EMERGENCY volunteer who was killed in the Bataclan attack on Paris on November 13, 2015.