After more than 20 years of war, it was a really great pleasure for participants of the 2nd international conference on local and regional health programmes, held in Quebec (Canada) in October 2004, to listen to a paper presented by an Afghan health professional (Shakir Sahibullah, MD from Aide Médicale Internationale).¹ Firstly, it was an opportunity to share our collaborative experiences on health financing studies with colleagues from everywhere, as I have been working in Afghanistan since 1996 and in collaboration with the speaker since 2001.² Lastly, but not least, as more than 40 countries were present it was an important occasion, even if aid donors are still miserly,³ to show that Afghanistan is back in the international public health scientific community.