AFGHANISTAN: SOME POSITIVE CHANGES FOR GIRLS AND WOMEN.

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"After missing five years of schooling under the Taliban regime, then returning to classrooms to find themselves placed alongside younger boys, Afghan girls are pouring by the thousands into an accelerated learning program designed to help them catch up to their male counterparts.

The three-month winter break program in Kabul has already drawn 15,000 girls and educated 11,500 in basic math and Dari. The turnout was greater than expected and is likely to attract more girls in coming weeks. It will meet the needs of older girls who have missed out on years of schooling due to the Taliban or being displaced overseas.

President Harold Karzai will launch an official campaign to immunize Afghanistan's women against tetanus. Tetanus kills about 30,000 women and 200,000 infants from developing countries each year but is easily prevented with a three-stage vaccine. In Afghanistan, immunization coverage levels are around 13 percent.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Pentagon announced a joint $5 million initiative to modernize and expand Kabul's largest women's hospital, Rabia Balkhi Women's Hospital, and set up four teaching clinics for maternal and child health in outlying parts of Afghanistan.

Afghan women suffer one of the world's highest maternal mortality rates. A survey released last December by the Centers for Disease Control and UNICEF revealed that 1,600 women of Afghanistan die in childbirth for every 100,000 children born.

By comparison, the rate in the United States is 12 per 100,000. Afghan Deputy Public Health Minister Ferozudeen Feroz has said that 70 percent of Afghanistan's clinics cannot provide the most basic maternal and child services. More than 25 percent of Afghan children die before turning 5, and two in five of those perish because of preventable diseases such as diarrhea.

The four teaching clinics will train doctors, nurses and midwives in critical birth and child care procedures. Funds will be used at the Rabia Balkhi Women's Hospital to modernize equipment and expand facilities. The hospital admits nearly 36,000 patients each year and delivers about 40 babies every day."