Women's access to healthcare has generally been poor in deeply conservative Afghanistan.
Afghan men prefer their women to consult only women doctors, but that is easier said than done in a society where there are few female doctors and nurses and little emphasis is placed on educating girls.
The problem got worse during the Taliban regime, when girls were banned from schools and there were severe restrictions placed on women leaving their homes.
During those years, from 1996 to 2001, there were only around 1,000 female healthcare workers in the whole country, staffing female-only hospitals.
But the situation is still far from ideal now, more than six years after the fall of the Taliban, even in places such as the northeastern province of Badakhshan where the town of Faizabad is located. The area is far from fighting with Taliban insurgents.
Only 66 percent of basic healthcare centres have at least one female health worker. Women make up only 23.5 percent of the country's healthcare workforce and 27 percent of its nursing staff.
MATERNAL DEATH
"One woman dies every 27 minutes in Afghanistan due to complications in childbirth and the tragedy doesn't stop with the mother's death," said Mayar.
"When the mother of a newborn dies, 75 percent of these babies die. Who will feed them, keep them warm? There's an Afghan saying: 'When the mother dies, the child is sure to die'."
The government plans to distribute the drug misoprostol to pregnant women in 13 provinces this year.
"We will distribute this to women in their seventh month of pregnancy and they must take it right after delivery. It will remove the placenta and prevent haemorrhage," Mayar said.
In the pipeline are plans to set up more midwifery schools and assign more female students to medical and nursing schools.
"To reduce maternal mortality, we need 8,000 midwives by 2010 to cover needs of all pregnant women," said Mayar. There are 2,143 midwives in the country of 26 million people.
But years of neglecting girls' education is taking its toll.
"In the provinces, the maximum level of education is the 10th grade, but the minimum requirement for entry into nursing school is 12th grade," said Fatima Mohbat Ali of the Aga Khan Foundation, an aid group in Afghanistan.
Some progress has been made in recent years, owing to government and NGO efforts to improve rural healthcare.
In Badakhshan's Eshkashem district, which borders Tajikistan, Afghan women have been frequenting the health clinic, the most modern looking facility in a town where most of the 13,000 residents live in mud houses.
From headaches to prenatal checkups, childbirth and advice on contraception, women have been bringing their complaints to the clinic's female doctor for the last three years.
"Ever since we got an ambulance, a lady doctor, two midwives and an operating theatre three years ago, we have not had a single case of maternal mortality," said Abdi Mohammad, head of the Eshkashem health clinic and an obstetric surgeon.
