Skip to playerSkip to main content
  • 14 years ago
The Herat city hospital in western Afghanistan serves a population of five million people from the area.

With just over 300 beds, the hospital is at full capacity.

It is also one hospital in the country with a burn unit.

In a province where the phenomenon is especially prescient, the hospital's burn unit often treats cases of female self-immolation.

Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith reporting from Herat hospital, speaks to Suraya Pakzad of Voices for Women organisation about the political and societal pressures that drives the women to self-immolation as well as the recent spate of school poisonings in the Central Asian nation.

Recommended