EMERGENCY’s Kabul Surgical Centre is one of the most important medical facilities in Afghanistan. Work started here in 2000, when EMERGENCY began renovating and expanding a former nursery school in the centre of the capital city, Kabul. The nursery had been destroyed by a rocket, in an incident which killed five children. In April 2001, this site re-opened as EMERGENCY’s Surgical Centre for War Victims, and was expanded further in 2015 to improve the facilities and increase the number of beds.The Kabul Surgical Centre houses an impressive number of facilities, including three operating theatres; an intensive care unit; an emergency room; outpatient clinics; a laboratory and blood bank; a radiology department; and equipment for physiotherapy and CT scans. The centre also specialises in trauma surgery. It is a key facility for treatment of injuries mostly caused by firearms but also mines, unexploded ordnance and knives.
EMERGENCY opened the Surgical Centre for War Victims in Lashkar-Gah in 2004. The hospital is the only free specialist trauma facility in Helmand province, in the south of the country. Helmand has been one of Afghanistan’s most volatile regions over the previous two decades of fighting, with large numbers of casualties: between 2004 and 2021, tens of thousands of war-wounded were treated at this hospital.
The Centres have been open and fully operational throughout the numerous phases of the conflict since their openings. The hospitals treated patients during the extremely volatile summer of 2021, culminating with the collapse of the Afghan government in August of that year. They remain open and committed to continuing operations uninterrupted.