At his home in Jalalabad, roughly 50 kilometres away from the epicentre, Dr. Sahak and his wife stormed out of their bedroom to find their eight children already in the hallway.<\/p>\n
\u201cI immediately thought about Herat,\u201d the Afghan physician in his late forties told me, referring to the earthquakes that devastated the country\u2019s western province in 2023. \u201cI could tell that the impact would be huge as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
A native of the Jalalabad area, he knew first-hand what this new disaster would mean for the country\u2019s northeast, where extended families all live under the same roof in remote, hard-to-reach locations.<\/p>\n
Within seconds, their homes built of mud and loose stones would crumble. Roads would disappear under the rubble. Families would be buried alive as they slept.<\/p>\n
Dr. Sahak, who leads the local World Health Organization (WHO<\/a>) emergency office, immediately turned to his health-cluster WhatsApp group, a thread that links hospitals, clinics and aid organisations across the region.<\/p>\n Reports began trickling in from Asadabad, the capital of neighboring Kunar Province, the hardest-hit area along the Pakistani border. There, the quake had been felt very strongly, the city\u2019s main hospital informed him. Some residents would likely be injured.<\/p>\n By 1am, the calls grew more urgent: \u201cWe received multiple injuries from different areas and the situation is not good. If possible, provide us with support!\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Sahak asked his WHO team to meet him at the organization\u2019s warehouse in Jalalabad. As he and his colleagues drove through the dark, rain began to fall \u2013 the monsoon that would complicate everything, from helicopter landings to ambulance runs, in the first hours of the response.<\/p>\n Soon, the aid pipeline clicked into place. A truck was loaded with medical supplies at WHO\u2019s depot, then transferred at Jalalabad\u2019s airport, five kilometres away, before a Defence Ministry helicopter lifted pallets toward Nurgal District \u2013 the epicentre of the earthquake, midway between Asadabad and Jalalabad.<\/p>\n \u201cFortunately, we were able to quickly reach the most affected area,\u201d Dr. Sahak said.<\/p>\n On September 2, 2025, Dr. Abdul Mateen Sahak and his WHO team visited a hospital in Kunar Province to monitor emergency healthcare services for people affected by the earthquake.<\/p>\n His initial field team came down to just four people: himself, a technical adviser, an emergency focal point and a security assistant.<\/p>\n Within hours, they drew in Afghan partners from two local NGOs, assembling a force of 18 doctors, nurses, and pharmacists \u2013 \u201csix of them were female doctors and midwives,\u201d he said. That first day, WHO managed to airlift 23 metric tonnes of medicine to Nurgal District.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the casualty figures kept climbing. \u201cThere was news that 500, maybe 600 people died. There were thousands of injuries and thousands of houses destroyed,\u201d Dr. Sahak recalled.<\/p>\n Five days later, the official toll is far grimmer: more than 2,200 dead, 3,640 injured, and 6,700 houses damaged.<\/p>\n He and his team reached Nurgal District on Monday afternoon aboard an armoured vehicle. \u201cMany roads were closed because big stones were falling from the mountains,\u201d he said. On the lanes that remained open, crowds were slowing down traffic \u2013 thousands of civilians rushing in, most of them on foot, to help the victims.<\/p>\n Once there, Dr. Sahak, a seasoned humanitarian worker, was unprepared for the scale of devastation. \u201cWe saw bodies in the street. They were waiting for the people to come in to bury them,\u201d he said. Volunteer rescuers streamed in from neighbouring districts to clear rubble, carry the injured, and tend to the dead.<\/p>\n Among the survivors was a 60-year-old man named Mohammed, whose house had been destroyed.<\/p>\n I could not bear to look this man in the eyes. He was tearing up<\/p>\n \u201cHe had a total of 30 family members living with him\u202622 of them had died in the earthquake,\u201d Dr. Sahak said. \u201cThis was shocking for me. I could not bear to look this man in the eyes. He was tearing up.\u201d<\/p>\n At the local clinic, its walls cracked by the tremors, medical staff treated a rapidly growing number of patients beneath tents pitched outside.<\/p>\n Dr. Sahak met a woman with multiple injuries \u2013 pelvic fracture, head trauma, broken ribs. She struggled to breathe and could not stop crying. \u201cShe kept saying: \u2018Where is my baby! I need my baby! Please bring me my baby!\u2019\u201d he recalled. Then he paused. \u201cNo, no, she lost her baby. All of her family.\u201d<\/p>\n On September 2, 2025, Dr. Abdul Mateen Sahak and his WHO team visited the regional hospital of Asadabad, in Kunar Province, to monitor emergency healthcare services for people affected by the earthquake.<\/p>\n In a country where strict gender rules govern public life, the earthquake briefly broke down barriers.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the first few days, everyone \u2013 men and women \u2013 was rescuing the people,\u201d Dr. Sahak said. Female doctors and midwives can still work in Afghanistan, but only if accompanied to hospitals by a male relative. He did not see female patients being denied care either.<\/p>\n In the first few days, everyone \u2013 men and women \u2013 was rescuing the people<\/p>\n The deeper crisis, he added, is the exodus of female professionals since the Taliban\u2019s return in 2021. \u201cMost of the specialist doctors, particularly the women, left the country\u2026We have difficulty finding professional staff.\u201d<\/p>\n The impact reached his own home. His eldest daughter had been in her fifth year of medical school in Kabul when the new authorities barred women from higher education.<\/p>\n \u201cNow unfortunately, she is at home,\u201d he said. \u201cShe can do nothing; there is no chance for her to complete her education.\u201d<\/p>\n From the outset, the WHO\u2019s task was to keep clinics running by providing technical guidance, medical supplies, and clear instructions. It also meant offering words of encouragement to the medical staff. \u201cWe told them: \u2018You are heroes!\u2019\u201d Dr. Sahak recalled.<\/p>\n As he cheered on local doctors, his family back in Jalalabad had been worried sick, following the news. He had spent a career running hospitals and leading emergency responses across Afghanistan, but this disaster struck too close to home.<\/p>\n That first night, when he finally returned to his wife and children, it was his 85-year-old mother who greeted him first. \u201cShe hugged me for more than 10 minutes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n She gently scolded him and tried to make him promise he would not go back to the stricken areas. But in the poor eastern districts of Nurgal, Chawkay, Dara-i-Nur and Alingar, tens of thousands of people were relying on the WHO to survive. The next morning, he was back on the trail.<\/p>\n On September 2, 2025, Dr. Abdul Mateen Sahak and his WHO team met two women, at the regional hospital of Asadabad, in Kunar Province, who had lost all of their family members in earthquake, on 31 August 2025.<\/p>\n By Friday afternoon, when I spoke to him, the figures in Dr. Sahak\u2019s ledger told the story of the emergency: 46 metric tons of medical supplies delivered; more than 15,000 bottles of lactate, glucose and sodium chloride distributed \u2013 intravenous fluids for trauma and dehydration; and 17 WHO surveillance teams deployed to track the spread of disease, which the agency expects soon because of the destruction of drinking water sources and sanitation systems.<\/p>\n WHO has asked for $4 million to deliver lifesaving health interventions and expand mobile health services. About 800 critical patients had already been rushed to the hospital in Jalalabad. Others were taken to the regional hospital in Asadabad, which Dr. Sahak and his team visited on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Outside the health facility, they noticed two survivors driven by the sun into a narrow strip of shade along a wall \u2013 an older woman and her daughter, both recently discharged, both alone.<\/p>\n They were alive, but their remaining 13 family members were dead<\/p>\n \u201cThey were alive, but their remaining 13 family members were dead,\u201d Dr. Sahak said. There was no one left to collect them. The daughter, in her twenties, seemed devastated: \u201cShe was unable to speak.\u201d Tears streamed down her face.<\/p>\n Moved by their plight, Dr. Sahak asked the hospital to keep them in a bed for a week or two. The director agreed. That night, back home, he recounted the scene to his family. \u201cAll of them were crying, and they were even unable to have dinner,\u201d he said. By then, even his mother no longer begged him to stay.<\/p>\n \u201cPlease go there and support the people,\u201d she told him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At his home in Jalalabad, roughly 50 kilometres away from the epicentre, Dr. Sahak and his wife stormed out of their bedroom to find their eight children already in the hallway. \u201cI immediately thought about Herat,\u201d the Afghan physician in his late forties told me, referring to the earthquakes that devastated the country\u2019s western province […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11611],"tags":[18664,245,3504,3402,6849,18663,710,6771],"class_list":["post-28357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spyballoon-global-news","tag-afghanistans","tag-doctor","tag-earthquake","tag-front","tag-lines","tag-mountains","tag-night","tag-shook"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",0,0,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",0,0,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",0,0,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",150,150,false],"medium":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",300,300,false],"large":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",1024,1024,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",1536,1536,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",2048,2048,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",370,265,false],"kava-thumb-s":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",150,85,false],"kava-thumb-s-2":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",230,230,false],"kava-thumb-m":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",400,400,false],"kava-thumb-m-vertical":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",370,500,false],"kava-thumb-m-2":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",570,450,false],"kava-thumb-l":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",1170,650,false],"kava-thumb-xl":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",1920,1080,false],"kava-thumb-masonry":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",600,999,false],"kava-thumb-justify":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",640,640,false],"kava-thumb-justify-2":["https:\/\/global.unitednations.entermediadb.net\/assets\/mediadb\/services\/module\/asset\/downloads\/preset\/Libraries\/Production%20Library\/05-09-2025-WHO-Afghanistan-02.jpg\/image770x420cropped.jpg",1280,640,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"#RiseCelestialStudios","author_link":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/author\/ralph-c\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"SPYBALLOON GLOBAL NEWS<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"At his home in Jalalabad, roughly 50 kilometres away from the epicentre, Dr. Sahak and his wife stormed out of their bedroom to find their eight children already in the hallway. \u201cI immediately thought about Herat,\u201d the Afghan physician in his late forties told me, referring to the earthquakes that devastated the country\u2019s western province…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28359,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28357\/revisions\/28359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Racing the monsoon<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Into Nurgal District<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\u2018Where is my baby?\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Women on the frontline<\/strong><\/h2>\n
A family\u2019s fear<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Ledger of life and death<\/strong><\/h2>\n
A mother\u2019s words<\/strong><\/h2>\n