Despite rosy assessments of progress by governments which have sent troops to Afghanistan, much of the country still lacks basic emergency medical care, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres.
In a report published on Tuesday, the charity said donors have too often provided assistance based not on people's needs but on considerations such as stabilization, counter-insurgency strategies or "winning hearts and minds," the Telegraph reported.
Strip away the rhetoric of state-building and the result is that access to medical care remains severely limited, it concluded.
According to the Telegraph, a 25-year-old school principal from Baghlan province spelt out the horror to MSF researchers.
"There is constant violence around my village," he said. "We never know how much fighting each week will bring. The fighting doesn't stop when there are injured people, so we can't get them to a doctor. So we wait, and then they die, and the fighting continues."
In order to compare the rhetoric with reality for Afghans, the charity surveyed more than 800 patients and their families at four hospitals where it works in Afghanistan.
"It found almost four out of five people had avoided their nearest clinic because they believe there were problems with staff in quality of treatment," the Telegraph reported. "One in ten people had travelled for more than two hours to reach hospital."
The Telegraph continued, "Patients described clinics without electricity or having to sell belongings in order to pay for expensive treatment."
"One in every five of the patients we interviewed had a family member or close friend who had died within the last year due to a lack of access to medical care," Christopher Stokes, MSF's general director, said.
"For those who reached our hospitals, 40 percent of them told us they faced fighting, landmines, checkpoints or harassment on their journey," Stokes said.
Ending a 13-year campaign, Nato-led combat troops are due to leave the country by the end of 2014.
With the troops gone, charities such as MSF fear Afghanistan will be forgotten by governments. Tired of the conflict, the public is now pushing to ensure donor money keeps flowing, according to the Telegraph.
"As international interest in Afghanistan wanes, MSF sees a conflict that still rages in many parts of the country alongside a failure to meet rising medical humanitarian needs," said Stokes. "While the international community seeks refuge in rhetoric, the Afghan people have to deal with the harsh reality."
