KABUL – Taliban authorities have transferred the equipment and facilities of the state-run Mohammad Ali Jinnah Hospital from the Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood in western Kabul to the Arzan Qeemat area in the east of the capital, according to local sources.
Witnesses said the relocation process began two days earlier, but on Wednesday, September 10, the bulk of the hospital’s equipment was moved, leaving the facility now empty.
Despite repeated appeals from residents of western Kabul, the Taliban’s Ministry of Public Health went ahead with the transfer without offering any explanation for the move.
Dasht-e-Barchi, home to a large population of ethnic Hazaras, is one of Kabul’s most impoverished and underserved areas. The community has faced decades of marginalization and, under Taliban rule, growing persecution and discrimination. Residents fear that stripping the area of one of its only major state-run health facilities will further deepen their hardships.
A few days before the relocation, community representatives had written to the Taliban’s health ministry urging authorities to reconsider the decision and instead focus on expanding the hospital’s services.
Locals say the removal of the hospital will leave hundreds of thousands without adequate access to essential medical care in a part of the city already deprived of public resources.
The Mohammad Ali Jinnah Hospital, built with financial assistance from Pakistan, was inaugurated in April 2010 in Dasht-e-Barchi. Former Afghan health minister Ferozuddin Feroz had announced at the time that the hospital would be completed in three phases: first with internal medicine and surgery wards, followed by the opening of kidney transplant and cancer treatment units.
Until its closure, it remained the only large government hospital serving western Kabul. The relocation comes after the Taliban had earlier shut down the smaller 50-bed Dasht-e-Barchi Hospital due to “budget shortages.”
