Reports from Afghanistan say Taliban restrictions are preventing many women from receiving care from male doctors and dentists. (Foto: Instagram)
The Taliban, which governs Afghanistan, has imposed an unofficial ban preventing women from receiving medical care from male professionals, according to accounts from Afghan women and medical workers. Doctors’ and dentists’ offices have reportedly been raided by police, and male providers could be arrested for treating female patients, according to testimony reported by The Guardian and Zan Times.
Doctors and dentists say they are not allowed to examine women or provide emergency care to them. Reported exceptions include situations in which a woman is accompanied by a male guardian, known as a mahram, or a nurse can perform the procedure. A doctor who has worked for 15 years at a public hospital in northern Afghanistan said male providers were barred from examining female patients because they were not the patients’ mahram, regardless of how simple the procedure was or how critical the patient’s condition.
In some areas, including Balkh province, doctors have reportedly been prohibited since May from addressing female patients by their names. Instead, they have been told to use “Bibi,” a title used to refer to women in the country, including on medical prescriptions.
The restrictions come as the Taliban has barred women from studying medicine since 2024. Women who had already qualified as doctors have lost their jobs, while the regime is also reported to have prohibited hospitals from hiring female employees. Women who work are required to have a mahram—a male figure such as a father or husband—accompany them whenever they leave home.
The accounts reported by the newspapers conflict with remarks made in February by Hamdullah Nomani, Afghanistan’s communications minister. At a meeting with doctors in Kabul, Nomani said male doctors would be considered mahrams when treating female patients and had special religious authority in clinical settings. He said that although he was not permitted to look at a woman’s face in the city, doctors could see a patient during surgery and, in that context, were permitted to remove her clothing. Nomani added that doctors should use this authority safely and that clerics agreed physicians could access areas others were not allowed to enter.
