CNN: Afghanistan's reputation as the world's leading narcotics supplier is well-known, but in a squalid ruin in Kabul, the country hides a darker secret -- a huge home grown drug addiction problem now on the brink of fueling an HIV/AIDS epidemic. Here junkies lie in their own filth, wasted limbs poking out of blood-spattered clothing as they blank out the abject misery of their surroundings. In one room, a veritable narcotics bazaar offers pills and drug paraphernalia -- with hits retailing at less than $4.      Full news...

IRIN: Twenty-eight deaths from cholera and/or acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) have been reported in Afghanistan in the past two months, the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) has said. At least 673 cases of AWD and/or cholera had been reported in 11 of the country’s 34 provinces, it said. According to the World Health Organization, cholera, which is rarely reported in Afghanistan, is an acute diarrhoeal infection caused by ingestion of the bacterium vibrio cholerae.      Full news...

IRIN: Flash floods killed at least 11 and damaged dozens of houses in Alingar District, Laghman Province, eastern Afghanistan on 2 September, according to provincial officials. "So far five bodies have been found and search and rescue activities are ongoing in the affected areas," Sayed Ahmad Sapai, a spokesman for the Laghman governor's office, told IRIN, adding that most victims were children and women.      Full news...

IRIN: Most people in the Afghan capital Kabul live in illegal, unplanned and sub-standard houses that are prone to natural disasters and lack water and sanitation facilities, according to government officials. "Of the [estimated] five million people currently living in Kabul, at least three million are residing in illegal and unplanned houses," Abdul Wahab Sadaat, deputy director of city services at the Kabul Municipality, told IRIN.      Full news...

IRIN: Armoured vehicles, armed escorts, blast-resistant walls and other security measures have made humanitarian work in Afghanistan more expensive and risky than ever before, say analysts. “Due to insecurity in some regions of the country, WFP [the UN World Food Programme] has had to take extra measures to ensure the safety of its staff, as well as the safe delivery of its food, and these have related costs,” Susannah Nicol, WFP’s information officer in Kabul, told IRIN.      Full news...

IRIN: Stagnant water in flood-affected parts of Afghanistan is the perfect breeding ground for malaria-causing mosquitoes, health specialists warn. “We anticipate an increase in malaria cases this year,” Najibullah Safi, director of the National Malaria and Leishmaniasis Control Programme (NMLCP), told IRIN in Kabul.      Full news...

IRIN: Thousands of people who lost their houses in January-May flooding in different parts of Afghanistan need help to repair or rebuild their homes, or find new ones, before winter. “Where houses are damaged or completely destroyed, people are in urgent need of shelter,” Asif Khairkhwa, chairman of the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) in the northern province of Balkh, told IRIN. “People should have a shelter before the winter.”      Full news...

IRIN: Family planning services are available in over 90 percent of health facilities across Afghanistan but the number of women using them in rural areas is too low, according to the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH). Hamida Ebadi, director of MoPH’s reproductive health unit, reckoned only 14-15 percent of women in rural and remote regions use family planning services. Most pregnancy-related deaths happen in remote, isolated and insecure areas of the country where people have poor access to quality health services, officials say.      Full news...

IRIN: Over 1,000 families in a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Kandahar Province, southern Afghanistan, have opted to return to their home areas in the north and northwest of the country because of worsening insecurity and lack of aid at the camp. Mohammad Azam Nawabi, director of the refugees’ department in Kandahar, told IRIN 1,087 families had formally expressed their desire to return.      Full news...

IRIN: Farmers in Afghanistan’s top potato-producing province are complaining about declining profits, mainly because of cold weather, lack of storage facilities and bad roads. Potato cultivation in Bamyan Province, central Afghanistan, employs thousands of people and output can top 150,000 tons a year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock.      Full news...

The Trentonian: If so, maybe it’s time to look at the other Afghan surge: its population growth. It’s been seven years now since George W. Bush committed American troops to Afghanistan. Since then, Afghanistan’s population has jumped by 22 percent. Under current projections, its population will be twice as large in 2026 as it was in 2001. That’s because the average Afghan woman has almost seven children, one of the highest fertility rates in the world.      Full news...

IRIN: Flash floods in the past two weeks have killed at least 20 people and destroyed hundreds of homes, according to the Afghanistan National Disasters Management Authority (ANDMA), which has declared a nationwide state of emergency. Without the state of emergency we will not be able to save lives and keep the situation under control,” Abdul Matin Edrak, director of ANDMA, told IRIN in Kabul, adding that the aim was to “mitigate the impacts of severe floods”.      Full news...

IRIN: Flash floods, landslides and earthquakes in different parts of Afghanistan in the last 10 days or so have damaged thousands of houses, killed hundreds of livestock and made thousands homeless, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has said. “In Balkh Province [northern Afghanistan] about 1,500 families need emergency assistance,” said Sheilagh Henry, an OCHA field coordinator.      Full news...

Associated Press: The Army has approved new guidance to military commanders in an effort to stem the rising toll of soldier suicides, officials said late Thursday. Army leadership has become more alarmed as suicides from January through March rose to a reported 56 -- 22 confirmed and 34 still being investigated and pending confirmation. Usually, the vast majority of suspected suicides are eventually confirmed. The 2009 number compares to 140 for all of last year, a record blamed partly on strains caused by repeated deployments for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.      Full news...

IRIN: Open defecation, lack of toilets and poor sanitation in makeshift internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Afghanistan are a health threat, particularly to children, health workers and aid agencies say. According to the Afghan government, at least 230,000 people are living in formal IDP camps and informal settlements where few sanitary, water and toilet facilities are available. About 500 families (2,500 individuals) displaced from southern regions have set up shacks, tents and mud huts in Qambar on the western outskirts of Kabul.      Full news...

The National: Even as the international community renews its pledge to help develop Afghanistan’s infrastructure and public services, health workers throughout the nation’s capital paint a picture of a daily struggle against the odds in conditions that have barely improved since 2001. The lack of funding is so severe that operations are being carried out with old versions of the wrong instruments and patients must often supply themselves with medicines. In some cases, easily preventable deaths have apparently resulted.      Full news...

Reuters: Survivors of a strong quake in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan say they spent a freezing night in the rain outside the collapsed remains of their homes because promised government help did not reach them. The local government said it had sent over 200 tents and around 600 blankets to the quake zone, and other assistance was on its way. But residents said they had seen no sign of the help, and spent a frightening night outside, with 7 or 8 aftershocks.      Full news...

USA Today: The Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs are overemphasizing mild traumatic brain injury among combat troops at the expense of other medical problems that are going untreated, two Army mental health researchers say in an article that has raised intense objections from other scientists studying the condition. Cols. Charles Hoge and Carl Castro say the military should scrap screening questions meant to uncover cases of mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) among troops returning from combat.      Full news...

IRIN: Over 600,000 Afghans lack basic healthcare services due to attacks on healthcare facilities and health workers - a figure that has doubled since 2007, Abdullah Fahim, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), has said. About 32 health centres were torched, destroyed and/or closed down due to insecurity in 2007, and 28 health facilities were shut down or attacked in 2008, MoPH said.      Full news...

Common Dreams: The proposed new Afghan law requiring (among other things), women to have sex with their husbands on demand and not leave home unescorted, has shocked the West. But for women in Afghanistan whose rights have always been bargaining chips to be given or taken away for political gain, it comes as no surprise. Despite the rhetoric from the Bush Administration in 2001 that “to fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women (Laura Bush),” Bush’s own military strategy set the stage for the new Taliban-like law today. In hiring the fundamentalist warlords of the Northern Alliance to defeat the Taliban, the US knowingly sacrificed women’s rights for political gain.      Full news...

Quqnoos: An Afghan emergency hospital records 600 suicide attempts within a year. This is an enormous number of Afghans, mainly women, trying to commit suicide to flee violence in life. Based on the figures given by the Ibn-e Sina Emergency Hospital in Kabul more than 600 incidents of suicide attempts have been referred to this hospital during the past 12 months.      Full news...

CNN: The United Nations says that more than $15 billion in aid has been sent to Afghanistan since the U.S.-led coalition overthrew the Taliban in late 2001. But still, the hospital cannot afford to help the hundreds of children who stream in every day, desperate for care and cures. The government does pay for salaries and sometimes for fuel, but there is often a shortage of even basic supplies like syringes.      Full news...

IRIN: Millions of trees have been lost in Nangarhar and the neighbouring provinces of Kunar and Nooristan and the ecosystem has been severely damaged because of deforestation, in part induced by drought, officials say. "In the past, over 134,000 hectares of land in the 11 districts of Nangarhar Province were forest, but now tree cover is down to less than 15,000 hectares," Nazir said. Large tracts of forest have also been lost to what were initially small fires. These often get out of control as Nangarhar only has two fire engines and very limited fire-fighting resources.      Full news...

Reuters: Afghanistan sits on one of the largest mineral deposits in the region, the country's mines minister said, urging foreign firms to invest in oil, gas and iron ore sectors. A U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) had shown that the war-torn nation may hold far higher amounts of minerals than previously thought, Mohammad Ibrahim Adel said.      Full news...

IRIN: There are indications that some Taliban groups fervently oppose the use of contraceptives and may start using the issue as a pretext to launch further attacks on health centres, experts say. A pro-Taliban religious leader spoke for almost an hour against the use of contraceptive drugs, calling them “illicit and non-Islamic”. “Birth gaps have positive impacts on a mother’s health and the practice is in compliance with Sharia [Islamic] law so we will continue to recommend it,” Abdullah Fahim, a spokesman for MoPH, told IRIN.      Full news...

BBC Persian (Translated by RAWA): At the threshold of International Women’s Day, Afghan officials give the news of self-immolation in eastern Afghanistan. According to the local officials of Herat province, a 45-year-old woman committed self-immolation due to ‘poverty and mental pressures’.      Full news...

The Associated Press: The number of U.S. troops who have suffered wartime brain injuries may be as high as 360,000 and could cast more attention on such injuries among civilians, Defense Department doctors said Wednesday. The estimate of the number injured — the vast majority of them suffering concussions — represents 20 percent of the roughly 1.8 million men and women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, where blast injuries are common from roadside bombs and other explosives, the doctors said.      Full news...

Scientific American: There are currently 184,000 troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 15 percent of whom have suffered brain injuries from concussions, physical injury or blast exposure. A new survey of about 1,000 soldiers with these injuries suggests that the effects can be lasting: Nearly all of them suffered from headaches, according to research released this week by the American Academy of Neurology. Civilians might experience these sorts of headaches after a car accident or a concussion. But in the line of duty, soldiers can be exposed to more frequent physical injury as well as explosions—which range from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to mortar fire—that can leave them with mild traumatic brain injury.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of northeastern Badakhshan province said that two pregnant women and five children were died due to lack of facilities in the provincial hospitals. Abdul Azim, a resident of Raghistan district said that he transferred his wife to Yawan district hospital in three days, but there was also no gynecologist.      Full news...

RAWA News: If Afghan victims of American or NATO forces get mentioned at all in the mainstream press, it is the dead. Those permanently maimed in “precision” air strikes or midnight assaults by U.S. Special Forces hardly ever are worthy of notice. Yet, such attacks result in injured as well as wounded; indeed, the ratio of wounded to civilians killed in the predominant air attacks in Afghanistan during the initial U.S. bombing campaign was about 1.8 to 1. This ratio has likely decreased as the fighting became more lethally focused, but a decreasing ratio raises the specter of war crimes having been committed against civilians.      Full news...