The Night the Mountains Shook: Afghan Doctor Races to Save Lives

On September 2, 2025, Dr. Abdul Mateen Sahak and his WHO team visited a hospital in Kunar Province to monitor emergency healthcare services for people affected by the earthquake.

The first jolt threw Dr. Abdul Mateen Sahak out of bed. The second sent him to his phone. It was just before midnight last Sunday, and the steep, mountainous valleys of eastern Afghanistan had been hit by a powerful 6.0-magnitude earthquake, closely followed by the first of many aftershocks.

At his home in Jalalabad, roughly 50 kilometres from the epicentre, Dr. Sahak and his wife rushed out of their bedroom to find their eight children already in the hallway.

“I immediately thought about Herat,” the Afghan physician in his late forties said, referring to the earthquakes that devastated the country’s western province in 2023. “I could tell that the impact would be huge here as well.”

A native of Jalalabad, he knew first-hand what this new disaster would mean for the country’s northeast, where extended families often live under the same roof in remote, hard-to-reach locations.

Within seconds, homes built of mud and loose stones could crumble. Roads would disappear under the rubble. Families might be buried alive as they slept.

Dr. Sahak, who leads the local World Health Organization (WHO) emergency office, immediately turned to his health-cluster WhatsApp group, which links hospitals, clinics, and aid organisations across the region.

Reports trickled in from Asadabad, the capital of neighbouring Kunar Province, the hardest-hit area along the Pakistani border. The city’s main hospital reported multiple injuries.

By 1 a.m., the calls grew more urgent: “We received multiple injuries from different areas and the situation is not good. Please provide support if possible!”

Dr. Sahak asked his WHO team to meet him at the organization’s warehouse in Jalalabad. As they drove through the dark, rain began to fall – the monsoon would complicate everything, from helicopter landings to ambulance runs.

Soon, the aid pipeline clicked into place. A truck was loaded with medical supplies at WHO’s depot, then transferred to Jalalabad’s airport, five kilometres away, before a Defence Ministry helicopter lifted pallets toward Nurgal District – the epicentre, midway between Asadabad and Jalalabad.

“Fortunately, we were able to quickly reach the most affected area,” Dr. Sahak said.

His initial field team numbered just four: himself, a technical adviser, an emergency focal point, and a security assistant.

Within hours, they drew in Afghan partners from two local NGOs, assembling 18 doctors, nurses, and pharmacists – six of them female doctors and midwives. That first day, WHO managed to airlift 23 metric tonnes of medicine to Nurgal District.

Meanwhile, casualty figures kept climbing. “There was news that 500, maybe 600 people died. Thousands were injured, and thousands of houses were destroyed,” Dr. Sahak recalled.

Five days later, the official toll was far grimmer: more than 2,200 dead, 3,640 injured, and 6,700 houses damaged.

He and his team reached Nurgal District on Monday afternoon in an armoured vehicle. “Many roads were closed because big stones were falling from the mountains,” he said. Crowds slowed traffic – thousands of civilians on foot were rushing in to help the victims.

‘Where is my baby?’

Once there, Dr. Sahak, a seasoned humanitarian worker, was unprepared for the scale of devastation. “We saw bodies in the street. They were waiting for people to bury them,” he said. Volunteer rescuers streamed in from neighbouring districts to clear rubble, carry the injured, and tend to the dead.

Among the survivors was a 60-year-old man named Mohammed, whose house had been destroyed.

“He had a total of 30 family members living with him…22 of them had died in the earthquake,” Dr. Sahak said. “This was shocking. I could not bear to look this man in the eyes. He was tearing up.”

At the local clinic, its walls cracked by the tremors, medical staff treated patients beneath tents pitched outside.

Dr. Sahak met a woman with multiple injuries – pelvic fracture, head trauma, broken ribs. She struggled to breathe and could not stop crying. “She kept saying: ‘Where is my baby! I need my baby! Please bring my baby!’” he recalled. Then he paused. “No, she lost her baby. All of her family.”

In a country where strict gender rules govern public life, the earthquake briefly broke down barriers.

“In the first few days, everyone – men and women – was rescuing people,” Dr. Sahak said. Female doctors and midwives can only work in hospitals if accompanied by a male relative, yet he did not see female patients denied care.

The deeper crisis, he added, is the exodus of female professionals since the Taliban’s return in 2021. “Most specialist doctors, particularly women, left the country…We have difficulty finding professional staff.”

The impact reached his own home. His eldest daughter, in her fifth year of medical school in Kabul, is now barred from higher education. “Unfortunately, she is at home,” he said. “She can do nothing; she has no chance to complete her education.”

The WHO’s task was to keep clinics running with technical guidance, medical supplies, and clear instructions. It also meant offering encouragement to medical staff. “We told them: ‘You are heroes!’” Dr. Sahak recalled.

Back home, his family in Jalalabad had been worried sick. That first night, when he returned, his 85-year-old mother greeted him first. “She hugged me for more than 10 minutes,” he said.

She gently scolded him and tried to make him promise not to go back. But in the poor eastern districts of Nurgal, Chawkay, Dara-i-Nur, and Alingar, tens of thousands relied on WHO to survive. The next morning, he was back on the trail.

By Friday afternoon, figures in Dr. Sahak’s ledger told the story: 46 metric tons of medical supplies delivered; over 15,000 bottles of intravenous fluids distributed; 17 WHO surveillance teams deployed to track potential disease outbreaks from damaged water and sanitation systems.

WHO has requested $4 million to expand lifesaving interventions and mobile health services. About 800 critical patients were already rushed to Jalalabad hospital. Others went to the regional hospital in Asadabad.

Outside the health facility, two survivors – an older woman and her daughter – were in a narrow strip of shade.

“They were alive, but their remaining 13 family members were dead,” Dr. Sahak said. The daughter, in her twenties, seemed devastated. “She was unable to speak.”

Moved, Dr. Sahak asked the hospital to keep them in a bed for a week or two. That night, he recounted the scene to his family. “All of them were crying, and they could not have dinner,” he said. By then, even his mother no longer begged him to stay.

“Please go there and support the people,” she told him.