At home in Jalalabad, about 50 kilometers away from the episent, Dr. Sahak and his wife out of their bedroom to find their eight children already in the hallway.
“I immediately thought of Herat,” the Afghan doctor told me in his late forty, referring to the earthquakes that destroyed the country’s western province in 2023. “I could tell that the effect would be huge too.”
He was a resident of the Jalalabad area and knew first hand what this new disaster would mean to the country’s northeastern, where extended families all live under the same roof in remote, difficult to access locations.
Within seconds, their home built of mud and loose stones would crumble. Roads disappeared under the rubble. Families would be buried alive when they slept.
The first calls
Dr. Sahak, who leads the local World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Office, immediately turned to his health cluster WhatsApp Group, a thread that connects hospitals, clinics and aid organizations throughout the region.
The reports began to drip in from Asadabad, the capital of the nearby Kunar province, the hardest hit area along the Pakistani border. The earthquake had been felt very strongly, the city’s main hospital informed him. Some residents would probably be injured.
By KL. 1 grew the call more urgently: “We received more damage from different areas and the situation is not good. If possible, we give ourselves support!”
Racing Monsun
Dr. Sahak asked his who team to meet him at the organization’s warehouse in Jalalabad. As he and his colleagues drove through the darkness, rain began to fall – the monsoon that would complicate everything, from helicopter landings to ambulance runs, in the first hours of the answer.
Soon Aid Pipeline clicked in place. A truck was filled with medical supplies at WHO’s depot, then transferred to Jalalabad’s Airport, five kilometers away, before a Defense Ministry Helicopter lifted pallets against the Nurgal District – Earthquake’s episent, midway between Asadabad and Jalalabad.
“Fortunately, we were able to quickly reach the most affected area,” Dr. Sahak.
On September 2, 2025, Dr. Abdul Mateen Sahak and his Who Team a hospital in Kunar province to monitor relief services for people affected by the earthquake.
Into the Nurgal -District
His original field team came down to only four people: himself, a technical adviser, an emergency focus point and a security assistant.
Within a few hours, they pulled into Afghan partners from two local NGOs and gathered a strength of 18 doctors, nurses and pharmacists – “Six of them were female doctors and midwives,” he said. The first day that managed to air 23 metric tons of medicine to the Nurgal District.
Meanwhile, climbing climbing. “There was news that 500, maybe 600 people died. There were thousands of injuries and thousands of houses destroyed,” Dr. Sahak.
Five days later, the official toll is far grimmer: More than 2,200 dead, 3,640 wounded and 6,700 houses damaged.
He and his team reached the Nurgal District on Monday afternoon aboard an armored vehicle. “Many roads were closed because big stones fell from the mountains,” he said. On the lanes that remained open, crowds slowed down the traffic – thousands of civilians rushing in, most of them on foot, to help the victims.
‘Where’s my baby?’
Once there was Dr. Sahak, an experienced humanitarian worker, unprepared for the extent of destruction. “We saw bodies on the street. They waited for people to come in to bury them,” he said. Volunteer rescuers streamed from the nearby districts to clear rubble, carry the wounded and tend to the dead.
Among the survivors was a 60-year-old man named Mohammed, whose house had been destroyed.
I couldn’t bear to look this man in the eyes. He ripped up
“He had a total of 30 family members who lived with him … 22 of them had died in the earthquake,” Dr. Sahak. “This was shocking to me. I couldn’t bear to look this man in his eyes. He ripped up.”
At the local clinic, its walls cracked by trembling, medical staff treated a rapidly growing number of patients under tents that were beaten outside.
Dr. Sahak met a woman with several injuries – pelvic fracture, head trauma, broken ribs. She struggled to breathe and couldn’t stop crying. “She continued to say, ‘Where is my baby! I need my baby! Bring me my baby!'” He remembered. Then he paused. “No, no, she lost her baby. All her family.”
On September 2, 2025, Dr. Abdul Mateen Sahak and his Who Team The Regional Hospital in Asadabad in Kunar province to monitor emergencies for healthcare for people affected by the earthquake.
Women on the front line
In a country where strict gender rules control public life, the earthquake broke briefly barriers.
“For the first few days, everyone – men and women – saved the people,” Dr. Sahak. Female doctors and midwives can still work in Afghanistan, but only if accompanied by hospitals of a male relative. He also did not see female patients being denied care.
In the first few days everyone saved – men and women – the people
The deeper crisis, he added, has been the emigration for female professionals since Taliban’s return in 2021. “Most of the specialized doctors, especially the women, left the country … We have a hard time finding professional staff.”
The impact reached its own home. His eldest daughter had been in his fifth year at Medical School in Kabul when the new authorities excluded women from higher education.
“Unfortunately, she’s home,” he said. “She can’t do anything; there’s no chance for her to finish her education.”
A family’s fear
From the start, WHO’s task was to keep the clinics going by providing technical guidance, medical supplies and clear instructions. It also meant to offer words about encouragement to the medical staff. “We said to them,” You are heroes! ”, Dr. Sahak remembered.
When he cheered on local doctors, his family left in Jalalabad had been worriedly ill after the news. He had spent a career driving hospitals and leading emergencies throughout Afghanistan, but this disaster hit too close to the home.
The first night, when he finally returned to his wife and children, it was his 85-year-old mother who greeted him first. “She embraced me for more than 10 minutes,” he said.
She gently quarreled him and tried to make him promise that he would not return to the affected areas. But in the poor Eastern districts of Nurgal, Chawkay, Dara-in-Nur and Alingar, tens of thousands of people were dependent on who should survive. The next morning he was back on track.
On September 2, 2025, Dr. Abdul Mateen Sahak and his WHO team Two women at the regional hospital in Asadabad in the Kunar province, who had lost all their family members in earthquakes on August 31, 2025.
Ledger of life and death
By Friday afternoon, when I was talking to him, the numbers told Dr. Sahak headbok The story of the emergency: 46 tonnes of medical supplies delivered; More than 15,000 bottles of lactate, glucose and sodium chloride distributed – intravenous fluids for trauma and dehydration; and 17, who monitored teams that were deployed to trace the spread of diseases that the agency soon expects due to destruction of drinking water sources and sanitation systems.
That has asked for $ 4 million to provide life -saving health interventions and expand mobile healthcare. About 800 critical patients had already been rushed to the Jalalabad hospital. Others were led to the regional hospital in Asadabad, as Dr. Sahak and his team visited Tuesday.
A mother’s words
Outside of the health facility, the two survivors who were driven by the sun into a narrow strip shade along a wall – an elderly woman and her daughter, both recently discharged, both alone.
They were alive but their remaining 13 family members had died
“They were alive, but their remaining 13 family members had died,” Dr. Sahak. There was no one left to gather them. The daughter in her twenties seemed destroyed, “She was unable to speak.” Tears flowed down her face.
Moved by their situation asked Dr. Sahak the hospital to keep them in a bed for a week or two. The director agreed. That night, at home, he told the scene to his family. “All of them were crying, and they were not even able to have dinner,” he said. At that time, even his mother no longer asked him to stay.
“Go there and support the people,” she told him.
