Afghanistan has improved its health sector a lot from 2002 to 2017 but it is still challenging to provide adequate health support in remote areas. Life expectancy in Afghanistan is 59 to 62 years and total expenditure of health is 8.2% of GDP, which is lower than other comparable countries (WHO 2015). A decade of war weakened Afghanistan’s health system and many qualified doctors left the country which made progress even slower.

Our approach to healthcare combines preventive, promotive and curative healthcare services, following existing government guidelines on basic health service packages and essential hospital service packages.

BRAC was the first development organization in the country to widely use female community health promoters for whom literacy was not mandatory. Community health promoters help to raise demand from communities for improved healthcare services from the local government by delivering basic healthcare services at their neighbors’ door-steps.  They are oriented on detecting and treating common diseases, providing maternal and child healthcare services, and referring critical cases to nearby government facilities.