Afghanistan today has the second highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world. After nearly thirty years of war and occupation, the nation's medical system has been devastated and its doctors and other medical personnel are poorly trained. Afghans hoped that the U.S. invasion in October 2001, which initially routed the Taliban regime, would bring improvements in women's health and education, but the rights of Afghan women to adequate healthcare are still denied.
In MOTHERLAND AFGHANISTAN, Afghan-American filmmaker Sedika Mojadidi vividly reveals the extent of this tragedy by documenting the 2003 return to Afghanistan of her father, an OB/GYN who emigrated to the U.S. in 1972, as he attempts to rehabilitate Kabul's Rabia Balkhi Hospital, the largest women's hospital in the country, with the promised support of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
After waiting four months for desperately-needed equipment and supplies, and struggling to work amidst frustrating and heartbreaking conditions—the staff must take up a collection to buy medical supplies at a local pharmacy and the only indication of U.S. sponsorship is that the hospital's maternity ward has been named for Laura Bush—Dr. Mojadidi acknowledges that he has made a "huge mistake" in accepting the position and returns home. Two years later, he returns to Afghanistan again, this time to work with an Afghan NGO to train the staff at a large rural hospital.
At both the Kabul and rural hospitals, MOTHERLAND AFGHANISTAN movingly documents his heroic efforts to make a difference, including training the hospital staff, performing difficult operations to deliver premature babies, operating to repair life-threatening pelvic damage incurred during childbirth, and confronting shocking situations of domestic violence against women. The film also relates its moving story through archival footage and photos, a visit to a local orphanage, scenes of Kabul's devastated cityscape, and interviews with Dr. Mojadidi and his wife, patients and their families, and hospital staff members.
As Dr. Mojadidi declares, in order to stop the abuse of women and prevent the high maternity and infant death rates, it will be necessary to educate Afghanistan's women and children about their rights. Despite the U.S. Government's highly-publicized claims to improvements in Afghanistan, MOTHERLAND AFGHANISTAN reveals that far more financing and human resources will be needed to significantly improve women's health care in this beleaguered nation.

First Run Icarus Film"Motherland Afghanistan" Last updated 14 February 2007. Retrieved 15 February 2007 <http://www.frif.com/new2006/afgh.html>