Burqa-clad Afghan women enter a medical treatment center in Kabul. Behrouz Mehri, AFP / Getty ImagesIn a study that will be difficult to replicate widely, due to the hands-on nature of the initiative, some mullahs in Afghanistan are strongly embracing the distribution of condoms and spacing of childbirths, in an effort to improve maternal health and child wellbeing in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s maternal death rate of 1,800 per 100,000 live births is topped only by Sierra Leone worldwide, according to UNICEF. The U.S. rate is 11 per 100,000 births.

Under the project administered by U.S.-based nonprofit Management Sciences for Health and funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the use of birth control pills, condoms and injected forms of birth control rose to 27% over eight months in three rural areas. In one area, about half of the women participated.

Unlike the Catholic Church, Islam is not fundamentally opposed to birth control, vasectomies or abortions. In Jan 2009, the Vatican issued a position paper saying that birth control causes abortions and cancer and arguing that the rhythm method is equally effective.

The mullah-embraced project seems to have worked for two major reasons:

1) The mullahs not only endorsed the project but acted as facilitators, quoting verses from the Quran that communicated the appropriateness of birth control. In a related statement, Farhad Javid, program director of Marie Stopes International, a British-based family planning organization in Kabul said that the mullahs dispensed birth control from his organization.

2) Husbands were involved and counselled against worry that their own fertility or virility would be negatively impacted by birth control practices.

USAID, the World Bank, and the European Union are all working to fund an expansion and continuation of the program in Afghanistan. via MSNBC