Eelco Jacobs, Senior Advisor at KIT and Chair of our new Centre for Health Systems Strengthening for Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings, will be speaking on ‘Health systems strengthening in Afghanistan through times of war and times of peace’, at a Brownbag Series session at The Institute for Global Health and Development (IGHD), on 13 March 2023 at 1300 CET.

The IGHD is a multidisciplinary centre for postgraduate education and research at Queen Margaret University (QMU) in Edinburgh, UK.

“As international troops have left the country and new crises emerge in the world, the situation in Afghanistan risks becoming a forgotten humanitarian crisis. At this crucial moment for the country, we have a moral obligation to remain engaged and remember that public health gains are possible with the right type of support, while not dodging the tough questions that arise when supporting the health sector in a country that is once again ruled by a regime disdainful of human and particularly women’s rights,” says Eelco.

After 20 years of progress in health systems strengthening and reducing gender inequality, Afghanistan’s public health gains were thrown into peril when the Taliban recaptured power in 2021. What was gained, what was lost and how does the international community balance the goals and principles of public health and health systems strengthening with a commitment to human rights and the intention not to lend legitimacy to Taliban rule? 

These questions and dilemmas will be central to this session.

A long-term collaboration

This session is part of a series aimed at the IGHD staff, PhD, and Master Students. The seminar will also complement a module run by IGHD on Health Systems in Fragile Settings in the MSc Global Health, Applied Global Health and Mental Health and Psychosocial Support.

The seminar builds on a longer research collaboration between KIT and IGHD at QMU on health systems in fragile and conflict-affected settings, most notably on a study looking at Performance Based Financing (PBF) in humanitarian settings as part of the ReBUILD project .

You can find the publications: here and here.

If you are interested, you can join the seminar on 13 March 2023 at 1300 CET via this link: https://tinyurl.com/4z49r4tp