Afghanistan Health Crisis: Clinic Closures and Outbreaks
Recent Developments
01By late June 2025, humanitarian partners had suspended or closed 422 health facilities, affecting about 3.08 million people across 30 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.
02By December 20, 2025, the number of suspended or closed facilities had risen to 445, still affecting about 3.08 million people in 30 provinces.
03WHO’s 2026 Health Emergency Appeal states that 14.4 million people will need health assistance in 2026 as funding cuts and disease outbreaks continue to converge.
Interventions
- WHO-supported emergency health services and health-cluster response activities remain active in Afghanistan, despite facility closures and funding shortages.
- Humanitarian health partners continue operating health-cluster coordination and limited service delivery in affected provinces, including support for surviving facilities and outbreak response.
What Works
- Rapid restoration of donor funding to keep primary health facilities open is the most direct way to prevent further service collapse, as WHO warned closures were driven by funding shortages.
- Maintaining vaccination campaigns and outbreak surveillance helps reduce measles and other epidemic risks, especially where immunization coverage is low.
How to Help
- Donate to reputable humanitarian health organizations working in Afghanistan.
- Support emergency health and vaccination programs through established NGOs and UN agencies.
- Advocate for sustained international funding for Afghanistan’s health system and humanitarian response.
Make an Impact
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Verified Organizations
Organizations Helping(26)
MSF’s strategy is to deliver *direct, fast, and independent* medical assistance in places where people are in immediate danger and routine health systems cannot function.[2][4][6] The organization emphasizes medical impartiality and neutrality, meaning it treats people according to need rather than nationality, politics, religion, or other status markers, and it relies on financial independence to reduce external influence over its work.[4][6] Operationally, MSF combines rapid emergency deployment with long-term field presence when crises become protracted.[1][4][6] Teams of clinicians, logisticians, epidemiologists, mental health specialists, and other staff adapt services to local conditions, often working alongside local personnel in highly insecure environments; MSF also uses public advocacy when it believes witness testimony and pressure are needed to improve access to care or address systemic barriers.[1][4][5][6]
In 2025, the Health Cluster prioritizes strengthening access to primary healthcare in hard-to-reach areas, improving referral pathways, and sustaining essential services amid facility closures and Taliban restrictions on female health workers, coordinating multiple partners to prevent total health system collapse.
The Afghanistan programme implements mobile clinics, health facility support, nutrition screening and therapeutic feeding, WASH interventions to prevent disease outbreaks, and emergency cash assistance to improve access to care; it coordinates with local authorities and humanitarian clusters to prioritize provinces with facility closures and high returnee concentrations.
WHO maintains global mpox surveillance, provides response guidance, supports diagnostics and vaccine access via the International Coordinating Group (ICG) for mpox vaccines, and evaluates rapid diagnostic tests. In the African Region, they support a continental response across all pillars including surveillance, diagnostics in most countries, and vaccine delivery to 16 countries for at-risk populations. They also focus on communication, community engagement, case detection, treatment, laboratory confirmation, transmission containment, health supplies, and health worker protection.
