‘My wife died giving birth after Trump cut funding to our clinic’

“If the clinic had been open, they might have lived” – Afghan families suffer after aid cuts shut down rural health centres

When Shahnaz went into labour, her husband Abdul quickly called a taxi to take them to the nearest clinic – the same place where their two older children had been safely born.

The journey took 20 minutes over rough gravel roads to Shesh Pol village in Afghanistan’s remote Badakhshan province. Abdul sat by his wife’s side, holding her hand and whispering words of comfort.

But when they arrived, the clinic doors were locked.

“I didn’t know it had been shut down,” Abdul recalls, his face breaking with grief. “She was in so much pain.”

The couple had no choice but to turn back. On the way home, Shahnaz gave birth to their baby girl in the car. Moments later, she began bleeding heavily. Shahnaz died by the roadside. A few hours later, before she could even be named, the baby also passed away.

“I wept and screamed,” Abdul said. “My wife and child could have been saved if the clinic was open.”

A lifeline cut off

The Shesh Pol facility – a modest, single-storey building with peeling paint and USAID posters on the walls – had once been a vital maternity centre in this mountainous, hard-to-reach region. It was one of more than 400 health centres closed after the Trump administration cut nearly all U.S. aid to Afghanistan earlier this year, citing concerns that money was indirectly reaching the Taliban government.

For local families, the impact has been devastating. The clinic’s midwife once handled 25–30 births a month, offering medicines, injections, and basic care. Without it, mothers now face perilous journeys to faraway hospitals – journeys many cannot afford. Abdul spent 1,000 Afghanis ($14.65) just to rent the taxi that day, nearly a quarter of his monthly wages as a labourer.

Graves of mothers and newborns

Abdul is not alone. Just steps from his wife’s fresh grave lie two others – women from the same village who died in childbirth in recent months.

Nearby, Khan Mohammad mourns his wife Gul Jan, who died five months ago as she delivered their baby boy. The child survived only three days. “My children are sad all the time,” he says quietly. “No one can give them the love of a mother.”

In another village, Ahmad Khan’s daughter, Maidamo, also died giving birth after her local clinic was closed. Holding back tears, he said: “Even if she had died in a clinic, we would have known doctors tried. Now, all we have is regret. America did this to us.”

For others, childbirth at home is now the only option. Bahisa, who lost her newborn daughter shortly after birth, describes the agony: “I had no medicine, no painkillers, no midwife. The pain was unbearable. I felt like life was leaving my body.”

Hospitals overwhelmed

With so many rural facilities shut down, the regional hospital in Faizabad is overflowing.

Designed for 120 patients, it now holds more than 300. Women in labour share beds, miscarrying mothers sit on floors, and doctors say maternal deaths are rising sharply. “By August, we had already seen as many deaths as the whole of last year,” said hospital director Dr. Shafiq Hamdard.

Midwives like Razia Hanifi are exhausted. “This is the toughest year I have seen in 20 years,” she said. “Too many patients, too few staff, no resources.”

But new reinforcements are unlikely. The Taliban has banned higher education for women, and last year extended the ban to midwifery and nursing training. With no new midwives being trained, Afghanistan’s maternal health crisis is set to deepen.

A worsening crisis

The Taliban denies siphoning aid money and says NGOs distribute it independently. But international donors, unwilling to recognise the Taliban government, have withdrawn support – leaving ordinary Afghan families to pay the price.

In Badakhshan and beyond, the cost is counted in graves.

For Abdul, life is emptier than words can capture. “We had a hard life, but we lived it together. I was always happy with her,” he says. He has no photo of Shahnaz to remember her by – only the memory of that final car ride, and the silence that followed.