At his home in Jalalabad, about 50 kilometers from the epicenter, Dr. Sahak and his wife burst out their room to find their eight children already in the corridor.
“I immediately thought of Herat,” said the Afghan doctor at the end of the forties, referring to the earthquakes that devastated the western province of the country in 2023. “I could say that the impact would also be huge.”
Originally from the Jalalabad region, he knew in the first hand what this new disaster would mean for the northeast of the country, where the enlarged families all live under the same roof in distant and difficult to reach places.
In a few seconds, their houses built in mud and loose stones would collapse. The roads would disappear under the rubble. Families would be buried alive at the top.
The first calls
Dr. Sahak, who heads the Emergency Office of the World Local Health Organization (WHO), immediately turned to his Whatsapp group of health cluster, a thread that connects hospitals, clinics and aid organizations across the region.
The reports began to flow from Asadabad, the capital of the neighboring province of Kunar, the hardest area affected along the Pakistani border. There, the earthquake had felt very strongly, the main hospital in the city informed it. Some residents are likely to be injured.
At 1 am, calls have become more urgent: “We have received multiple injuries from different areas and the situation is not good. If possible, we provide support! ”
Mumble
Dr. Sahak asked his team to meet him in the organization’s warehouse in Jalalabad. While he and his colleagues crossed the darkness, the rain started to fall – the monsoon that would complicate everything, from helicopter landings to ambulance races, in the early hours of the response.
Soon, the help pipeline was set up. A truck was responsible for medical supplies at the WHO deposit, then transferred to Jalalabad airport, five kilometers away, before a helicopter of the Ministry of Defense lifted him from the pallets to the district of Nurgal – the epicenter of the earthquake, halfway between Asadabad and Jalalabad.
“Fortunately, we were able to quickly reach the most affected area,” said Dr. Sahak.
On September 2, 2025, Dr. Abdul Mateen Sahak and his WHO team visited a hospital in the province of Kunar to monitor the emergency health services for people affected by the earthquake.
In the Nurgal district
His initial team on the field fell to only four people: himself, a technical advisor, an emergency focal point and a security assistant.
In a few hours, they attracted Afghan partners from two local NGOs, bringing together a force of 18 doctors, nurses and pharmacists-“six of whom were women doctors and midwives,” he said. This first day, which succeeded in eagerly 23 metric tonnes of medicine in the district of Nurgal.
Meanwhile, the victims’ figures continued to climb. “There was a news that 500, perhaps 600 people died. There were thousands of injuries and thousands of destroyed houses,” said Dr. Sahak.
Five days later, the official toll is much darker: more than 2,200 dead, 3,640 injured and 6,700 damaged houses.
He and his team reached the Nurgal district on Monday afternoon on a armored vehicle. “Many roads were closed because the large stones fell from the mountains,” he said. On the tracks that remained open, crowds slowed down traffic – thousands of civilians rushing, most of them on foot to help the victims.
“Where’s my baby?”
Once there, Dr. Sahak, a seasoned humanitarian worker, was not prepared for the magnitude of devastation. “We have seen bodies on the street. They were waiting for people to bury them,” he said. Volunteer rescuers spread from neighboring neighborhoods to clean the rubble, wear the wounded and take care of the dead.
Among the survivors, there was a 60 -year -old man named Mohammed, whose house had been destroyed.
I couldn’t bear looking for this man in the eyes. He was tearing himself off
“He had a total of 30 family members living with him … 22 of them died during the earthquake,” said Dr. Sahak. “It was shocking for me. I couldn’t bear looking for this man in the eyes. He was tearing himself apart. “
At the local clinic, its walls cracked by the tremors, the medical staff treated an increasing number of growing patients under tents put outside.
Dr. Sahak met a woman with multiple wounds – pelvic fracture, head trauma, broken ribs. She had a hard time breathing and couldn’t stop crying. “She kept saying:” Where’s my baby! I need my baby! Please bring me my baby! “”, He recalls. Then he stopped. “No, no, she lost her baby. All her family.”
On September 2, 2025, Dr. Abdul Mateen Sahak and his WHO team visited the Regional Hospital of Asadabad, in the province of Kunar, to monitor emergency health services for people affected by the earthquake.
Women on the front line
In a country where the strict rules between the sexes govern public life, the earthquake has briefly decomposed barriers.
“During the early days, everyone – men and women – saved people,” said Dr. Sahak. Doctors and midwives can still work in Afghanistan, but only if they are accompanied in hospitals in a male parent. Nor has he seen patients refused care.
In the first days, everyone – men and women – saved the people
The deeper crisis, he added, is the exodus of professionals since the return of the Taliban in 2021. “Most specialized doctors, especially women, have left the country … We have trouble finding professional staff.”
The impact has reached his own house. His eldest daughter had been in her fifth year of medical school in Kabul when the new authorities prohibited women in higher education.
“Now, unfortunately, she’s at home,” he said. “She can’t do anything; There is no chance for her to finish her studies. ”
Fear of a family
From the start, the WHO task was to maintain clinics in progress by providing technical advice, medical supplies and clear instructions. This also meant to offer words of encouragement to medical staff. “We said to them,” You are heroes! ” “, Recalls Dr. Sahak.
While encouraging local doctors, his family back in Jalalabad had been sick after the news. He had spent a career to lead hospitals and to lead emergency responses through Afghanistan, but this disaster struck too much near his home.
This first night, when he finally returned to his wife and children, it was his 85 -year -old mother who praised him first. “She hugged me for more than 10 minutes,” he said.
She scolded him gently and tried to make him promise that he would not return to the struck areas. But in the poor oriental districts of Nurgal, Chawkay, Dara-I-Nur and Alingar, tens of thousands of people counted on the WHO to survive. The next morning, he was back on the track.
On September 2, 2025, Dr. Abdul Mateen Sahak and his WHO team met two women, at the Regional Hospital of Asadabad, in the province of Kunar, who had lost all members of their earthquake family on August 31, 2025.
Great book of life and death
Friday afternoon, when I spoke to him, the figures from the great book of Dr. Sahak told the story of the emergency: 46 tonnes of medical supplies delivered; More than 15,000 bottles of lactate, glucose and distributed sodium chloride – intravenous liquids for trauma and dehydration; And 17 of the surveillance teams that have been deployed to follow the propagation of the disease, which the agency is soon expecting due to the destruction of drinking water sources and sanitation systems.
Who asked for $ 4 million to provide life health interventions and extend mobile health services. About 800 critical patients had already been transported to Jalalabad hospital. Others were taken to Asadabad Regional Hospital, which Dr. Sahak and his team visited on Tuesday.
The words of a mother
Apart from the health center, they noticed two survivors trained by the sun in a narrow strip of shadow along a wall – an older woman and her daughter, both recently unloaded, both alone.
They were alive, but their 13 remaining family members died
“They were alive, but their 13 remaining family members died,” said Dr. Sahak. There was no one left to recover them. The girl, in her twenties, seemed devastated: “She could not speak.” Tears flowed on his face.
Moved by them, Dr. Sahak asked the hospital to keep them in a bed for a week or two. The director accepted. That night, at home, he told the scene to his family. “All were crying and they couldn’t even dine,” he said. At that time, even his mother did not begged him to stay.
“Please go ahead and support people,” she said.
