Our underlying recommendations

A: Provide mobile field hospitals now
Mobile field hospitals are urgently needed to deal with war casualties, severe malnutrition and other urgent medical cases, and should be immediately established until proper hospitals are in place in southern Afghanistan. Blood banks must be established as part of each temporary mobile medical and surgical facility and eventually become part of the permanent hospitals.

B: Rebuild existing hospitals to help Afghans
Existing hospitals must be immediately renovated to provide not only basic health care, but also care for war casualties and the endemic malnutrition. As part of this hospital renovation, training in basic hygiene and institutional housekeeping should be provided to local Afghan people to create immediate employment in the existing hospitals.

C: Implement outreach and training programmes to foster sustainable improvements in health
Medical doctors should be provided with continuing medical education by their military counterparts to manage the trauma of war, and outreach programs for the malnourished, children under five, pregnant women and the elderly must be developed and implemented. Meanwhile, comprehensive surveillance of health indicators such as disease incidence and prevalence must begin immediately. This surveillance must include those living in refugee camps and remote villages. The information gained should be used to guide the response of the international community.

D: Build new hospitals to international standards to meet Afghans’ expectations
The international community should immediately fund and provide the engineering and construction expertise to build new hospitals in Kandahar and Lashkar Gah. To positively impact on Afghans’ perceptions, these hospitals must be built to British and Canadian standards, the same standards as the hospitals provided for NATO military troops.

E: Make emergency poverty relief a top priority
Poverty is the primary enemy of Afghanistan’s reconstruction, and must be defeated. As a beneficiary of international aid, Afghanistan receives the lowest amount of reconstruction financing compared to all other post-conflict nations, signifying a failure to recognise that Afghanistan is among the poorest of the poor nations. The response to emergency crises like starvation is not only a humanitarian necessity – it represents an essential part of any stabilisation effort.

F: Engage more with the local communities
It is important to engage with communities on the ground, reflecting their priorities and real needs in national development policies. By integrating the development priorities and possibilities of the real Afghanistan, Afghans’ increasingly negative perceptions of the reconstruction process can be dispelled.