State-Funded Medicines Sold Privately in Nangarhar

Residents of the Bati Kot district in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar district say they are poorly served by their local clinic.

An IWPR reporter who travelled to Bati Kot, about 35 kilometres from Nangarhar’s main city Jalalabad, found pharmaceuticals marked “not for sale” on offer at local privately-run chemists’ shops.

Local residents told him they were pretty sure the medicines were originally delivered to the state health clinic for the district, so that staff there must have sold them on. The quality of care at the clinic was generally low, they said.

Mahbubshah Mahbub is an IWPR-trained radio reporter in Nangarhar, Afghanistan. 

This report was produced as part of the Afghan Critical Mass Media Reporting in Uruzgan and Nangarhar project, and is also published on the Afghan Centre for Investigative Journalism website which IWPR has set up locally.