Critical Response to the Comments on the Critical Issue of Infant and Child Mortality in Afghanistan

This paper critically examines a set of arguments challenging a study on infant and child mortality in Afghanistan, highlighting several inaccuracies and oversights. It defends the use of secondary data as a practical necessity in conflict-affected and resource-limited settings where primary data collection is often impossible. The paper clarifies that, as a scoping review, the study’s purpose was to map existing evidence rather than perform advanced statistical analysis. It also explains the difficulty of obtaining comparative or counterfactual data in unstable regions with limited infrastructure. Concerns about political bias are deemed speculative and unsupported by evidence, while suggestions such as expanding rural healthcare facilities are criticized as unrealistic given Afghanistan’s economic challenges. The paper concludes that the study offers meaningful insights into the country’s complex child mortality crisis despite these unfounded criticisms.