Health

Taliban Bans Corneal Transplants, Citing Islamic Grounds

By Vivek Dubey

The Taliban has ordered hospitals in Afghanistan to stop performing corneal transplant operations, stating the procedure conflicts with Islamic teachings. The directive threatens to deprive hundreds of patients—especially young people who have lost sight from explosions, accidents, and welding injuries—of treatment. Dr Noor Zaman Hashim of Noor Eye Hospital in Kabul reported that his facility had carried out about 90 transplants in recent months before the ban halted the program. The hospital now has a waiting list dominated by trauma victims. Hashim told The Telegraph that Afghanistan’s healthcare system has suffered decades of violence, leaving a shortage of ophthalmologists and locally available corneas. He added that the Taliban verbally instructed the hospital to cease transplants and that staff fear severe punishment if they defy the order.

The transplant program had been supported by the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America (APPNA), a U.S.-based charity that has supplied free donor corneas for operations in Pakistan since 2017 and expanded into Afghanistan earlier this year, performing more than 150 surgeries and training three Afghan ophthalmologists in Peshawar.

This ban joins a growing list of restrictions imposed by the Taliban since regaining power in 2021, which has also banned chess over gambling concerns, limited internet access in several provinces, removed 140 books written by women from university curricula, and ordered the discontinuation of 18 subjects, including human rights and women’s studies. Girls remain barred from education beyond the sixth grade, and professional midwifery training programs have been shut down.