ARCS faces serious funding shortage

The Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) has warned President Hamid Karzai that it faces a severe funding crisis threatening its essential health-care operation. It told Karzai on Thursday that its network of 50 clinics, which provide services to some 2 million people, and remained operational under the Taliban, may be forced to make major cutbacks. "We made the point that the Afghan Red Crescent is not getting adequate recognition for its work," Bob McKerrow, the head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in South Asia, said after meeting Karzai. "This unique network sustained much of the population during the very difficult years of the 1990s," McKerrow added. The non-governmental humanitarian organisation has been the biggest provider of health care in Afghanistan - a country with little health-care infrastructure of its own - for decades. But this year it has received only a quarter of the US $10 million it needs, and has been facing a shortfall since April. Without urgent donations, it says it will have to cut back on vital services such as clinics, mother-and-child services, mobile medical units for remote areas, routine vaccinations and health education. Denis McClean, the spokesman for the Federation in Geneva, told IRIN that any reduction of services would affect vulnerable people. "It's the country with the highest maternal mortality rate in the world, and much of the other health indicators are pretty poor as well. So one fears to think how bad the situation might be if the Afghan Red Cross didn't have this network of 50 clinics around the country," he said. McClean said, however, that plans for cutbacks had not been finalised. "We're still hopeful that donors will rally around, but there's no doubt that the Afghan Red Cross will not be able to maintain the present level of services if more funding doesn't come in. It's just not possible to continue to reach the numbers they are reaching now." A recent ARCS initiative provided six mobile medical clinics to reach people in remote areas. Between January and March 2003, the clinics treated 10,000 people who would otherwise have had no access to primary health care. In the same period, a total of 140,000 people attended ARCS clinics, of which 22 percent were children under five; 135,000 people received health education, 7,000 women were given antenatal care and 2,000 had postnatal consultations. More than 42,000 children and 20,000 women received routine vaccinations, and the growth of over 6,000 children was monitored as part of a campaign against child malnourishment. McClean said he hoped that dispelling misconceptions about investment in Afghanistan since the end of Taliban rule would help encourage donors. "There is a false assumption that Afghanistan is well funded, you know, but certainly in the health sector it's not," he said.