On August 4, Paktya government officials held a cornerstone laying ceremony at the construction site for a 100-bed regional hospital to be built in Gardez City. The new hospital, built to international building code standards and able to withstand earthquakes, will house an emergency area, out-patient and in-patient wards, delivery and surgery theaters, examination rooms, and administration facilities. When completed in June 2012, the hospital will serve one million people from Paktya and the neighboring provinces of Paktika, Khost, and Ghazni.
USAID’s Construction of Health and Education Facilities project aims to raise standards of health care in Afghanistan. USAID and its partner in this project, the International Organization for Migration, are committed to providing quality construction in a transparent manner through this activity and others. In addition to the Gardez regional hospital, the project will build a 20-bed hospital in Paktika Province and three midwife training centers in Badakhshan, Bamyan, and Khost provinces. All these health projects combine the joint efforts the USAID, IOM, and the Government of Afghanistan for the benefit of the Afghan population.