The main laboratory in the Rabiya Balkhi women's hospital in Kabul has a single microscope which sits surrounded by innumerable pipettes on an office desk that serves as a lab worktop.

“It's a small, basic lab which is poorly equipped, poorly maintained and poorly financed,” acknowledged Abdi Momin Ahmed, a Somalian doctor working with World Health Organisation.
The dismal condition of the laboratory epitomises the sorry state of the entire 250-bed hospital, which has 65 doctors -- of which all but four are women -- 75 nurses and 75 auxiliary staff.
The average monthly wage is between $ 8 and $ 10, although nobody has been paid for four months. The medical team is led by the white-coated, veiled Dr Rahima Zafar Staneczai, who conducts a tour through the hospital, walking briskly down corridors whose walls are stained with the calcified residue of leaking pipes.
The first room on the tour is barely big enough for its six occupied beds. Anis Khanam, 25, lies on a bed supported by legs that are little more than lumps of twisted metal. “I came because my pregnancy is not going well,” said Khanam, who had to make her own way to Kabul on a two-day journey from the nearby province of Logar.
Against the wall stands a barely functioning radiator attached to the mains by a fearsome-looking loose wires. Next to one bed stands a yellowed plastic drip attached by an equally aged catheter into the arm of the patient. Under the sink, sits a metal box full of used bandages and vegetable peel.

Bureau Report