US-funded Kabul clinic forced to close because Health Ministry won't fund it

By next month, there will be no more doctors at a clinic once deemed a model in Afghanistan. The shelves of the pharmacy are already empty. The modern X-ray and dialysis machines, rarities in one of the world's poorest countries, sit unused in a building that was inaugurated by a top US general.

The project, launched by the Pentagon in 2007, is closing - its funding depleted and the Afghan government unable to provide support. Earlier this month, a patient came to see a doctor but found the clinic nearly abandoned.

"They might as well turn it into a soccer field," he says.

As the United States' longest war winds down, hundreds of aid projects are being handed over to Afghan ministries, which sometimes lack the capacity or interest to sustain what foreign donors started. The Urgent and Primary Care Clinic in Kabul is a small but telling example: one of the few medical facilities in Afghanistan with state-of-the-art American equipment, a place that once saw nearly 5,000 patients per month and will soon see none.

The clinic was the brainchild of Asad Mojadidi, an Afghan-born doctor who moved to the United States in 1982 and practiced in Jacksonville in the state of Florida. The doctor, who comes from one of Afghanistan's most influential families [his brother was once president], decided to use whatever clout he had to improve the country's failing health care system.

He pitched his idea for the clinic to contacts at the Pentagon, who told him that they could commit US$750,000. At the time, the military had billions to spend as part of its foreign assistance programme, called the Commander's Emergency Response Programme.