INTERSOS, in Afghanistan, works in areas where there are no basic services, no road connections, no hospitals, no clean water, no electricity and no sanitation in homes. Areas where most people have never gone to school, where there are no jobs and a high number of families can barely eat once a day.

This is where we focus most of our activities, to provide primary health care and psychosocial care to thousands of people who otherwise would have none.

The European Union funds 11 of the clinics we run in Afghanistan, particularly in remote areas of the south of the country, such as Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces.

With the support of the European Union in Afghanistan, we have been intervening since early this year to provide assistance to the hundreds of thousands of refugees forced to return from Iran and Pakistan.

Health: primary care, immunisation and maternal health

Among the most urgent health-related needs, especially in remote areas, are the need for primary care, immunisation, care for women before during and after childbirth, maternal and child health awareness, and psychological support. This is compounded by the lack of medicines and health equipment and that of health personnel due to lack of funds and restrictions imposed by the authorities. Our activities in health facilities focus mainly on malnutrition, maternal and child health, immunisation, and mental health, and are especially aimed at women and children living in the most vulnerable communities. Today Afghanistan is the only country in the world, along with Pakistan, where there are still cases of polio, especially in children, and this is a worrying factor considering that the disease is predictable with a vaccine.

The local INTERSOS staff in Afghanistan consists of nearly 300 women. Their presence is crucial, especially in the health care sector, to be able to ensure that Afghan women and girls receive the medical care and treatment they need.

Malnutrition: one of the world’s most serious emergencies

Afghanistan is currently facing one of the most severe malnutrition emergencies in the world. As of April 2025, 28 of the country’s 34 provinces are classified as severe or critical in terms of nutritional severity, with 7.8 million people in need of nutritional support, including 857,000 children with severe acute malnutrition, more than 2.5 million children with moderate acute malnutrition, and 1.1 million pregnant and lactating women in need of treatment. Despite projections of a slight improvement in food security, humanitarian organisations on the ground continue to report an increase in malnutrition cases, exacerbated by service closures and reduced funding. The situation is further exacerbated by four consecutive years of drought, economic decline and the return of hundreds of thousands of Afghans from Iran and Pakistan, further burdening already stretched services.

In our situated health facilities, children and women often arrive in difficult conditions. In July 2025 alone, we conducted 10,728 nutrition screenings of children under the age of 5 in all our health facilities and communities-585 of them were considered to be taken for Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM) and 298 for Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM). This means that nearly 8.2% of the individuals screened needed nutritional support for acute malnutrition.