Report Summary: Access to Health and Education Rights in Afghanistan; Research Reports (2); Series of Reports Related to Sustainable Development Goals (Focusing on Goals 3 & 4)

May 2020

 

The aim of this research is to obtain information on citizens’ access to their rights to health and education. The following is a summary of the findings of this research.

This research was conducted over a period of 8 months (August 2019 to March 2020). In the first six months (August to January 2019), the required information was collected by questioner, (field research), interviews and library studies, and in the next two months (February to March 2020), the classification and analysis of the information as well as the writing of the report were completed.

The statistical population of this research in field studies is all citizens of Afghanistan, and the sample population is 2610 people from 32 provinces.[1] 37.9 % of the sample population is women, and 62.1 % is men. 48.2 % of the sample population live in cities, and 51.8 % lives in villages.

1. Access to Health Services

The findings of this research indicate that out of the total number of interviewees (2610 people), 1,401 people (53.7%) lived more than two kilometers away from health centers, making it difficult for them to access health facilities. On the other hand, 42.8% lived less than two kilometers away from health centers. The other 3.5% did not answered this question.

The Level of Satisfaction from Services at Health Centers

The findings of this research show that 44.5 % of the people were not satisfied with the services at health centers, while the other 52.5 % said they were satisfied with the health services. The remaining three % did not express any opinion in this regard.

Reasons of Dissatisfaction

Those who were not satisfied with the health services referred to the following as a reason for their dissatisfaction: lack of medical equipment at health centers (48.1 %); lack of specialist doctors (24.4 %); lack of female doctors (7.1 %); improper behavior of health centers’ staff (9.3 %). The remaining 10.9 % of those dissatisfied did not give any specific reason for their dissatisfaction.

Access to Quality Medicine

The findings of this research show that 28 % of respondents faced problem accessing the needed medicine in their residential area. Likewise, 43.2% of interviewees were not satisfied with the quality of the medicine. Regarding the right to access medicine, 69.9% of respondents said they had easy access to the medicine they needed. The remaining 2.1% did not respond to this question.

Reliable Laboratories

According to this research, 56.6% of the sample population said that in the region where they lived there were no reliable laboratories, which caused them problems. However, 41 % of respondents said they had access to reliable laboratories nearby their living area. 2.4 % did not respond to this question.

Women’s and Children’s Access to Healthcare and Disease Prevention

Field study’s findings from this research show that 46.2 % of women in the sample population did not attend hospitals or health centers during pregnancy nor did they see a specialist doctor. In addition, 15.6 % of women and children in the sample population have not been vaccinated. In the meantime, 56.7 % of the total respondents have said that women in their families did not observe the minimum three-year interval between births and became pregnant earlier. Also, 11.6 % of women in the sample population still give birth at home without a doctor or midwife.

Access to Addiction Treatment Centers

The findings of the research show that 36.7 % of interviewees who were drug addicts or member of their families were drug addicts reported that they did not have access to addiction treatment centers due to long distance or financial problems.

2. Access to Education

The right to education in elementary, secondary, high school and higher education is investigated respectively.

Elementary School

The findings of this research show that there were 6,164 eligible children in the sample population household to attend school, 3,374 of whom (54.7 %) were girls. Out of the total number mentioned (73.6 %) of them attended school; thus, 26.4 % of them were deprived of education. Eventually, 43.9 % of the sample population who attended elementary school were girls making up 59 % of all the girls of elementary school age group in the household of the sample population.

Secondary School

According to this report, 3,332 children in the respondent's household were eligible to attend school, of whom 1,599 (48 %) were girls. Of the number of eligible children listed above, 74.6 % attended school while 25.4 % were deprived from the right to education.  Of all those attended secondary school 37.4 % were female students; the ratio of which to all girls in the sample population of the same age group is 58.3.

High School

Of the total 2,491 children in sample population households, eligible for high school, 47.5% were girls. Of the total 2,491 eligible children only 61.7% of them attended high school; the rest had either left high school or had not attended high school at all. In addition, the girls in the sample population household who attended high school makes up 35.6 % of all high school students, male and female, and 46.3 % of all the girls in the high school age group.

University

According to the findings of this study, the number of eligible students to go to university in the sample population households totaled 2602 people, of which 49.5% were girls and the rest were boys. Of those eligible for university, 67.1% attended university, of which 374 were girls, making up 21.4% of all college students and 29% of all girls of university age group in the sample population households.

 

The Reasons Why Students Don’t Attend School

The traditions and customs dominating the Afghan society are among the top reasons why 32.2 % of children in the sample population do not attend schools. The other reasons are as follows: lack of schools, especially in rural areas (21.4 %); distance of school from home (13.7 %); security issues (15.7 %); financial problems (12.5 %); administrative issues at schools like lack of qualified teachers, books or proper classrooms (4.5 %).

The Reasons Why Boys Don’t Go to University

According to this research, university-qualified boys reported the following problems as reasons for not attending university:

• Financial problems of their families (54.5 %).
• Failure in Kankor exam[2] (18.3 %);
• Security concerns (13.3 %);
• Parents’ disagreement saying that the teachings in university are against their religious beliefs (7.7 %); and,
• Personal will, a number of respondents have said they themselves refrained from attending university (6.2 %).

The Reasons Why Girls Don’t Go to University

The findings of this research indicate the following challenges as reasons why girls do not go to university:

• Dominance of obscene and harmful traditions (37.3 %);
• Financial problems of the family (24.8 %);
• Failure in Kankor exam (9.4 %);
• Security concerns (9.3 %);
• Fear of harassment (8.2 %);
• Inappropriate situation of girls’ dormitory and living away from the family (7.5 %); and
• Personal will, a number of respondents have said they themselves did not want to go to university (3.6 %).