Japan and the rest of the world must stay engaged with and support Afghanistan's long-term reconstruction, according to a Japanese nurse who recently returned from the war-torn country.
"When I came back, I was stunned to see how sharply the number of articles on Afghanistan had tapered off in the Japanese media compared with when I left Japan," said Junko Uezumi, who spent two months in eastern Afghanistan providing medical relief.
Uezumi, 28, who has worked at an Osaka hospital and as a volunteer nurse in Nepal and Pakistan over the past few years, left for Jalalabad in late January with other volunteer aid workers under a Tokyo-based nongovernmental organization, the Japan International Volunteer Center.