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Afghanistan: Dr Éric Cheysson, President of La Chaîne de l’Espoir, speaks after returning from his mission.
A look back at the mission to Afghanistan of Dr. Éric Cheysson, President of La Chaîne de l'Espoir.
The first French doctor to set foot in Afghanistan in 1980 with his friend and colleague Patrick Laburthe, Dr. Éric Cheysson is particularly attached to the country.
As President of La Chaîne de l’Espoir, he returns regularly to take part in the Board of Directors of the Institut Médical Français pour la Mère et l’Enfant (IMFE), the hospital we built, to talk to the teams and see the situation on the ground for himself. He was in Kabul in November 2023. State of the art.
The consequences of the influx of patients
Of course, such a situation is not without repercussions for IMFE and its smooth running. In a context that is already extremely difficult and complex, we need to :
- Maintain ” sufficient and continuous electrical power for all key sectors “, especially as electricity is cut several times a day,
- Faced with a water supply problem caused by severe, recurring drought, a new well had to be dug up to 220 meters deep to reach the water table,
- Dealing with the significant “brain drain” observed since the Taliban came to power, resulting in the departure of 160 doctors and nurses. These departures are understandable, as “any doctor or nurse with a young daughter at home cannot bear the total lack of future offered to them by this regime”, according to Dr. Éric Cheysson.
French hospitals face patient influx
As soon as he arrived at the IMFE, also known as the “French Hospital of Kabul”, Dr. Éric Cheysson noticed that the hospital was facing a huge influx of patients, whatever the department concerned (pediatric surgery, nutrition service, laboratory, radiology, scanner, intensive care unit, etc.).
In his opinion, there are many reasons for this:
- The explosion of needs linked to the humanitarian crisis,
- Restoring security, making it easier to get around,
- The failure of many health centers (unpaid salaries, lack of medical consumables and medicines), particularly those run by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC),
- The inability of a large proportion of the population to access care from private health facilities, due to high levels of poverty
A few figures suffice to illustrate this tension within the hospital, which also affects our Women’s and Children’s Pavilion: between January and September 2023, there were over 10,000 admissions to the hospital, including 4,000 surgical operations and 442 open-heart surgery operations. These are considerable figures.
As Éric Cheysson observes: “We’ve never achieved such volume before.
A context of multiple and dramatic crises
As if all this weren’t enough, Afghanistan is now in the throes of a terrible economic crisis that is hitting the population hard, especially children.
As Dr. Éric Cheysson reminds us, “Before the Taliban came to power, the Afghan government’s budget stood at around $9 billion, 75% of which relied on international aid, most of it American. With the end of international aid, this budget has been drastically reduced. In addition, the Taliban regime is facing a liquidity crisis linked to US financial sanctions, and in particular the freezing of around $10 billion from the Afghan Central Bank. The Taliban government is trying to compensate for these losses by increasing exports, notably of coal, and above all by multiplying border taxes and customs duties. NGOs are not exempt.”
The result for Afghans is worsening poverty and food insecurity. In fact, it was in response to this food crisis that we set up a nutrition unit within the IMFE, offering consultations and, if necessary, hospitalization for the most serious cases of child malnutrition.
Despite all these headwinds, La Chaîne de l’Espoir stands firm and remains fully mobilized alongside Afghan women and children. As Dr. Éric Cheysson forcefully reminds us: “Under no circumstances can we abandon Afghanistan!
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