“We get all kinds of patients with all kinds of sorrows. Afghans returning from Iran via the Zero Point health clinic on an unowned piece of land right on the border speak of rampant torture and rights abuse.
For the last 13 years, Khala Noorjahan has travelled over 20 kilometres every day to the edge of Afghanistan, to work in a small makeshift clinic that lies in western Herat province, on the border the country shares with Iran. She is not a doctor or a nurse, but trained years ago as a midwife — a life-saving skill she learned along the way. She now assists a doctor and two nurses at Zero Point, a neutral space between Iran and Afghanistan where the return of Afghan refugees is facilitated.
Their makeshift health clinic has a capacity to take up 30 cases each day. Its manager Dr Noor Ahmad Mohammadi gave this reporter a tour of the clinic, which is made of mud, bricks and some wooden planks. The facility is divided into four rooms: the outpatient department, a midwives' room, a vaccination centre and Mohammadi's office, where he examines the health of the refugees.
According to the International Organization for Migration, Iran hosts approximately 950,000 documented Afghan refugees. At least another 1.5-2 million undocumented Afghan migrants are currently in Iran. They tend to face forceful deportations. In 2019 alone, nearly 273,700 Afghans were deported from Iran. Many of them, faced with hardships and difficult circumstances, were treated at Mohammadi’s clinic at Zero Point.
For the first 16 months, he worked for free. “As someone who has lived in the very situation as these people, I can relate to their problems better than anyone else. I am able to empathise with them and help them in a more personal way,” he said.
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