The World Health Organization (WHO) has been active in Afghanistan since 1960.  WHO’s main goal is to improve the health status of Afghanistan’s people. WHO works in close collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health, UN agencies, health partners including national and international non-government organizations. WHO aims to reduce mortality, morbidity and disability, and to improve health, especially those of the vulnerable population.  This aim is achieved with other partners through building the national capacities in terms of technical assistance in policy formulation, strategic planning, training and management support across all public health interventions. 

The priority programme areas of WHO include: polio eradication initiative, tuberculosis programme, expanded programme on immunization, disease early warning surveillance, primary health care, basic development needs programme, reproductive health, child care, disease surveillance and control, HIV/AIDS, water and sanitation, and emergency preparedness and humanitarian action. 

History

The World Health Organization country office in Afghanistan was established with a minimal staff in the 1960s in Kabul and in the 1980s was relocated to Quetta, and then to Peshawar.  In the 1990s, WHO’s main office was relocated to Islamabad from where it operated its programmes through nine WHO sub-offices inside Afghanistan. In February 2002, the main office was again relocated to Kabul, and was working through eight sub-offices in Afghanistan and one support office in Islamabad until early 2005. 

Today, the WHO Representative’s Office in Afghanistan is operating in Kabul and has its own building in the UN compound along Jalalabad Road. Currently, 176 staff members are employed, including 19    international staff.   The majority of the staff is involved in polio eradication initiative and the TB programme.   WHO Afghanistan has sub-offices in Jalalabad, Kandahar, Heart, Mazar, Faizabad, Kunduz, Gardiz and has maintained is liaison office in Islamabad, Pakistan.