London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The Integrated Package of Essential Health Services for Afghanistan was launched in Kabul in 2019 by His Excellency Minister Dr Feroz (Public Health Minister of Afghanistan), and Dr Tedros, the World Health Organization Director-General, both of whom are LSHTM alumni.

Bringing together health, clinical and surgical interventions, population public health interventions, and inter-sectoral policy interventions will greatly help to improve the health of all Afghans. Sound and efficient implementation of the package will also help the health system become more resilient, especially around disease and injury shocks. Of the 164 different interventions, 84 have been prioritised for implementation. These include media messages around healthy eating, physical activity, and mental wellbeing, regulation of emissions to deal with air pollution and enacting water and sanitation standards.

This approach can also be useful to other countries with on-going armed conflict or chronic emergencies, and is now publicly available.

The Ministry of Public Health is particularly grateful and indebted to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their funding of the work undertaken. The development of the package was improved by interactions between local and international members of the committee. The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine managed and coordinated the grant, with international experts from DCP3, WHO, UCL, SickKids and LSHTM.