Operating without women: Taliban’s mixed-gender ban for surgical teams worsens Afghanistan health crisis

Women comprise less than a fifth of specialised physicians in the country, new decree risks shutting Afghan women out of professions & access to healthcare.

Taliban has slowly and systematically barred women and girls from several fields | Representative image | Reuters File

New Delhi: The Taliban has banned mixed-gender surgical teams in Afghanistan’s operating rooms, a decree that international organisations warn could prove fatal in a country where women already constitute less than a fifth of the medical workforce.

A document dated 10 February, acquired by Afghanistan International, directs that surgical teams must be exclusively male or exclusively female. Crucially, it states that a patient’s gender will not be a factor in assigning surgical staff.

Women make up only 18 percent of specialised physicians and 29 percent of nurses in Afghanistan in 2023, according to a report by the US National Institutes of Health. Those numbers are likely to worsen: since seizing power in 2021, the Taliban has systematically dismantled ways for women to study and work across professions.

In 2022, the Taliban banned girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade. It has since barred women from enrolling in nursing and midwifery programmes.

A 2024 report by the United Nations warned that the regime is indirectly decimating the next generation of female doctors, nurses, and midwives. The consequences extend well beyond operating theatres. The report projected in 2024 that Afghanistan urgently needed at least 18,000 more midwives to meet the population’s basic maternal care needs.

That deficit is made more acute by a separate Taliban rule prohibiting male medical staff from treating women unless a male relative is present—a restriction that makes female healthcare workers not just preferred, but also essential.

The operating room order is the latest in a series of directives tightening the Taliban’s grip on healthcare.

In November 2025, it made wearing burqa mandatory for all women entering hospitals, whether as patients, caregivers, or staff. At a regional hospital in Herat in west Afghanistan, the policy had an immediate and measurable effect–female admissions at the paediatric unit fell by 28 percent in just two days, a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) report said.

The cumulative toll is visible in Afghanistan’s maternal mortality figures, estimated to be one of the highest rates in the world. The country’s rate rose from 521 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023 to 620 in 2025, according to the World Health Organization.