FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 13, 2005
Contact: M. Ismail Kawusi, Deputy Director,
Health Education & Publication Dept.
Phone: 07-029-3946
Email: mi_kawusi@yahoo.com

Kabul, Afghanistan: Dr. Mohammad Amin Fatimie, Minister of Public Health, has returned to Kabul following a two-week series of meetings in Washington, DC with officials of the US government and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He was accompanied on the August 27-September 9 visit by Dr. Faizullah Kakar, Deputy Minister, and Dr. Ahmed Shah Salehi, Head of External Relations.

While in Washington, Dr. Fatimie met with USAID Administrator Andrew S. Natsios, as well as with Mike Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and attended a White House meeting with Claude Allen, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. He also met with officials of Management Sciences for Health, whose USAID-funded Rural Expansion of Afghanistan's Community-based Healthcare (REACH) Program has worked closely with the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health, at both central and provincial levels, since its inception in May 2003.

During his stay, Dr. Fatimie was the featured speaker in a panel discussion of Afghanistan's Emerging Health Portrait, held at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Dr. Fatimie also participated in a discussion sponsored by the Heritage Foundation on the problems women face around the world, including exploitation, maternal mortality, and illiteracy. Other speakers on the panel were Ellen R. Sauerbrey, Representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and Charlotte M. Ponticelli of the US Department of State's Office of International Women's Issues. Both discussions were broadcast on television throughout the United States on C-SPAN.

In separate meetings with two members of the House International Relations Committee, as well as with Congresswoman Caroline Maloney of New York and Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Dr. Fatimie stressed the need for America's continued support of Afghanistan's reconstruction and, in particular, of the Ministry's efforts to reduce the country's high maternal and child mortality rate and to increase the Afghan peoples' access to quality health services.

Dr. Fatimie spoke with officials of the Veteran's Administration and toured two veteran's hospitals while in Washington, including its most famous, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The Minister closely examined the facilities for treating the disabled and providing orthopedic services. In an interview given in Washington and broadcast in Kabul by the Voice of America, Dr. Fatimie remarked that he had traveled a long way to gain further financial support for healthcare in Afghanistan and that this trip was but one of many he was prepared to make on behalf of the Ministry of Public Health's work for the Afghan people.

<<< Back to News Room