Taliban bans Afghan women from studying to be midwives, nurses

CV NEWS FEED // The Taliban announced this week that women in Afghanistan are banned from studying medicine, a restriction that comes while women in certain provinces are also prohibited from getting treated by male doctors. 

Women are no longer allowed to study at either private and public institutions to become midwives, nurses, or dentists, or other occupations, reported George Johnson in a Dec. 4 article for The Telegraph. On Dec. 2 the ministry of public health announced the prohibition, issued by the Taliban’s supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada.

“The Taliban have also banned women in some provinces from being treated by male medical professionals,” stated organization Human Rights Watch Dec. 3, “which means that this new decree, halting the training of new female healthcare workers, will result in unnecessary pain, misery, sickness, and death for the women forced to go without health care, as there won’t be female healthcare workers to treat them.”

This ban puts women and girls in deadly peril, an expert with Human Rights Watch said. 

“This is closing one of the very few loopholes that was still left in the Taliban’s ban on education for women and girls,” Human Rights Watch Interim Women’s Rights Deputy Director Heather Barr told the Independent, adding, “but it is also a particularly significant loophole because this will lead to women and girls dying.”

A list in Johnson’s article also reports that the Taliban have prohibited Afghan women from speaking in public, or loudly within homes, or to male doctors. They are also prohibited from traveling by themselves, owning smartphones, singing, playing sports, going to the park or gym, going abroad, attending protests, or showing their faces in public, among other prohibitions. Girls are not allowed to go to high school.