A few months after the Taliban seized its clinic in Kabul, the Santa Barbara-based Afghanistan Dental Relief Project opened a new location on private land.
The Afghanistan Dental Relief Project, which has brought free dental care to some 200,000 people in Afghanistan, had its clinics seized by the Taliban earlier this year, said dentist James Rolfe, who built and supported the dental clinics.
The clinic location was seized to be turned into a market in an effort to generate income, he added.
Rolfe was able to raise enough funds for a new fully staffed dental clinic in Kabul, which recently opened two and a half months after the previous clinic was seized.
The new site of the project is on private land, which is not under the Taliban’s control, he said.
“We’re on private land now,” Rolfe said. “So we can’t really be taken over because they don’t have any hold over it, and because we’re an outside organization.”
Rolfe said it was difficult for the organization to find a location for such a facility with the right amount of land, good security, access to electricity and water, and in an area where people who needed the service could easily access it.
“We had people running around like crazy all over the city trying to find the place where we could put it and then the Taliban at the same time are on our case,” Rolfe said.
Though the clinic has reopened, the country is severely lacking in any medical resources.
“They haven’t paid any of their doctors in any of the hospitals and three quarters of the hospitals are closed because they can’t afford to heat the hospital,” Rolfe said.
Rolfe said hospitals cannot even provide patients with medical supplies.
“They don’t even have the ability to provide the service inside the hospital, and the doctors aren’t paid at all,” Rolfe said. “And you can imagine this really makes a problem for people who have illnesses that need to get treatment they can’t even get their treatment.”
Before the Taliban takeover, an additional clinic staffed by American-trained Afghan dentists provided dental treatment, not otherwise available in Afghanistan, for a fee, which was used to help pay the expenses of the project.
Now all of the funds for the free clinic are from private donors, Rolfe said.
“I’m in contact with them every day,” Rolfe said. “So we’re communicating back and forth, and I’m sending money every month to pay for the staff.”
He started the Afghanistan Dental Relief Project in 2003, and the 84-year-old dentist says he has put about $2 million into the organization.
Rolfe said he saves money to donate to the organization through foraging.
“I’m probably the only doctor in Santa Barbara that lives totally by foraging in the urban environment for all my needs,” Rolfe said. “So I live on less than $1,000 a month and I can convert all my discretionary income into charitable work.”
In 2021, when the United States left Afghanistan, Rolfe reported that the nonprofit had dozens of staff members stuck in the Taliban-controlled country.
Donate to the Afghanistan Dental Relief Project here.
Read more about the Taliban seizure of the dental clinic here.