Afghanistan: Afghanistan still lacking basic health care – despite rosy view of progress, says medical charity --- Medecins Sans Frontieres says access health care is limited and help has too often been delivered in areas seen as essential to counter-insurgency rather than based on population needs -- Much of Afghanistan still lacks basic emergency medical care despite rosy assessments of progress by governments which have sent troops to the country, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres. -- In a report published on Tuesday, the charity says donors have too often provided assistance based not on people’s needs but on considerations such as such as stabilisation, counter-insurgency strategies or “winning hearts and minds”. -- Strip away the rhetoric of state-building and the result is that access to medical care remains severely limited, it concludes. --- A 25-year-old school principal from Baghlan province, spelt out the horror to MSF researchers. -- “There is constant violence around my village,” he said. “We never know how much fighting each week will bring. The fighting doesn’t stop when there are injured people, so we can’t get them to a doctor. So we wait, and then they die, and the fighting continues.” --- It found almost four out of five people had avoided their nearest clinic because they believe there were problems with staff of quality of treatment. One in ten people had travelled for more than two hours to reach hospital. -- Patients described clinics without electricity or having to sell belongings in order to pay for expensive treatment.