My name is Severine Caluwaerts. I’m a gynaecologist-obstetrician from Belgium. I work at this moment in Khost, Afghanistan, in the largest maternity that MSF has. We delivered in December 1,905 babies in this hospital. And it’s my seventh time in this project. The first time was four years ago, and I keep coming back to this beautiful country and to its beautiful people.

I think my personal reason for coming back is I’m doing exactly the job which is why I started studying medicine so many years ago, to help people who most need help. Afghanistan is a war-torn country. Our patients are continuously confronted with the war. Families lose husbands, children die, mothers die. And what MSF is offering them is a safe place to deliver.

And also on a personal basis I decided to learn the language, Pashto. I bought a book in Pakistan when I was there and also the national staff have been very keen and eager to teach me. It makes also a huge difference in your interaction both with the staff and with the patients, if you can ask in Pashto “How are you?”, Tsange ye? “How is your baby?” “Is your baby a boy or a girl?” Or just to say Pa kheir raghle pa hospital ke, “Welcome in our hospital”. I think it’s really important for our acceptance here that we show that we want to learn also from the culture.

So what is also nice about coming back every time is that you see people grow. I see Afghani women, Afghani doctors, Afghani midwives. I see them from doing their first delivery to becoming really experienced and two of our national doctors still here, Dr Sadia and Dr Farida, I taught them basically their first Caesarean section and now so many years later they are independent.

It’s like a sisterhood of women. It’s Afghani women taking care of Afghani women and Afghani babies.