Hazara Nation

Online Athens

Doris Aldrich knows the women and children of war-torn Afghanistan need medical care, even if they aren't yet using the clinic the Athens-based Women to the World organization helped set up there.

Afghanistan has one of the highest women's suicide and infant mortality rates in the world, and for years, few Afghan women have been able to find medical treatment.

As president of Women to the World, Aldrich has been working for more than seven years to give Afghan women access to doctors and nurses.

Three years ago, Aldrich caught a break and used donations and grants from the Afghan Embassy to build a clinic in a 7,000 square-foot building in northern Kabul.

The clinic opened in June in a section of the city where more than 200,000 people lack reliable access to medical services.

"Many are handicapped widows, and the children are dying in large numbers still," Aldrich said.

People near the clinic live in extreme poverty and many young children are missing limbs from stepping on land mines.

Kabul's two main hospitals and several other clinics don't always allow women access to health care because of firmly established gender rules and racial tension among ethnic groups.

"Some (doctors) are still unwilling to serve Hazara women," Aldrich said, referring to one of Afghanistan's ethnic groups. "They'll let them lie there and basically bleed to death because of their ethnic prejudices."

And while women in Afghanistan are not allowed to drive cars - or even ride bicycles - Aldrich says she's witnessed several changes to what many view as oppression.

Six years ago, about 80 percent of Afghan women wore burqas, face-covering masks that also obstruct the wearer's view of the outside world. Today, about 40 percent of women in Afghanistan wear them.

Women also have been allowed back in schools, but most don't have classes for women beyond the teachings of the Quran.

Some 450 women come every week to a Women to the World training center in Kabul to learn English and how to use the Internet.

Some graduates have found office work with the government or military, while others dream of attending a university. Recently, Women to the World's focus has shifted to helping more women start their own small businesses.

"Our only teachers are females, and they interact with female students. The culture demands that, but we've gained the trust and it's taken that many years to do it," Aldrich said. "We're winning the gender war in Afghanistan, thank God."

On a return trip to Kabul last month, Aldrich visited the recently established women's clinic.

Three full-time male physicians and one-full time female gynecologist were working in the building, but not one woman has dared to seek their services.

That could change as Aldrich and others work to advertise the clinic and build on a network of trust.

"There's some basic marketing that if people are confused, or don't feel safe, they're not going to come to the right place," Aldrich said.

Aldrich talks about continuing her mission with the clinic by acquiring more polio vaccine to combat the disease which afflicts more children in Afghanistan than in any other developing nation in the world. She also plans to provide mental health and other forms of support for abused women.

"That's our big dream next, once the hospital is stabilized," Aldrich said.
Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Saturday, October 04, 2008