Ms Sarah Leahy:

Of course. Deputy Sorca Clarke asked about the capacity and facilities at Boost hospital. Maybe I can give a bit of an idea of what the hospital looks like. As I said earlier, there are nearly 1,300 staff there and sometimes up to 900 patients. When I was there, there were sometimes up to 1,000 patients in for emergencies. It is a very large hospital. It is a 300-bed facility but we often have two patients in a bed because we do not have the capacity to have one patient per bed. It is important to note that if a woman comes to the hospital with a child, she must be accompanied by a male chaperone or family member because women cannot come to the hospital unaccompanied. They often bring their children to the hospital. This also puts significant pressure on the hospital. We have to feed everybody in the hospital and the kitchen might have to provide more than 4,000 meals today.

Regarding facilities in the hospital, we have an emergency room where we treat all of our patients initially before admitting them. We have a large paediatric department. Within that, we have a therapeutic feeding centre, which serves patients who have acute and severe malnutrition. Ideally, these patients, who are all under five years of age, should be assessed by MSF and sent to other facilities, but these other clinics have not been operational since May 2021, or even before then when the fighting in Helmand province got very bad. MSF ends up treating all of these patients, sometimes for months at a time. The pressure is unsustainable. We do not have anywhere to refer patients to.

We have a large maternity unit. As I mentioned, I saw 100 women deliver on a particular day. It is important to note that most women in Afghanistan deliver their babies at home. These are primarily women with complications who are delivering late. They experience obstructed labour. Many arrive in a poor state and have not had any antenatal care because facilities are not operating to support them.

We run an operating theatre which in the past was not focused on trauma but which in recent times has had to. From 1 May until the end of July, we treated 482 war-wounded patients in our operating theatre, which is a huge number. Most of those wounds were called by shells and bullets. More than a quarter of these patients were under the age of one. More than 100 patients were just a few months old and had trauma from the conflict.

We have wards for post-operative care, including general inpatient wards segregated for males and females and large isolation units for contagious diseases such as measles and tuberculosis in which we treat Covid patients too. There are patients who have comorbidities, such as presenting with Covid and tuberculosis, and children under five who have Covid. We have a separate labour room for women who are in labour and have Covid.

We treat Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, which equates to a lesser version of Ebola and which has a very high mortality rate. We have an outpatient department, which deals with more minor illnesses. We have mental health services, which are so severely neglected that we can only really touch the surface. We treat patients who may just have lost family members, who are at the end of their lives or who are extremely traumatised post conflict, which most people are.

The Deputy asked why patients could not get treatment in somewhere like Musa Qala. There were no services there at all in the past because it was under Taliban control. The population could not get in or out of this particular area.

They do not now have the resources to build any facilities there so they have to travel. They trust MSF because everybody in Helmand province, and indeed most people in Afghanistan, have family members who have been treated by MSF in some capacity. There is a deep trust there. They also know that free healthcare will be provided and they will not be discriminated against, regardless of any ethnic issues. They know they will get healthcare regardless. We have been able to treat so many people, both members of the Taliban and those on the side of the Government of Afghanistan, because of our principles of independence, impartiality and neutrality. That is why we are held in such regard in Afghanistan.

I will talk briefly about linking the sanctions to the achievement of human rights. There are basic human rights. For example, every individual has the right to live. That means it is our collective responsibility to protect human rights and safeguard human life. People need access to free healthcare to all. Everyone has the right to equal treatment, irrespective of colour, caste, religion or gender. That is not being upheld at the moment.

It is important to note that our staff and beneficiaries do not have access to any money. In a post-conflict phase such as the one Afghanistan is now in, people cannot rebuild their lives. Humanitarian aid is being hampered, specifically at Boost Hospital where there is huge pressure on resources. The hospital is seeing up to 1,000 patients per day, which compromises the quality of care. Other services and facilities need to be operational in order for people to have basic access to healthcare. I think I have covered the questions that were asked. Is there anything else outstanding?