Lagatar24 Desk
Kabul, Feb 9: Only five hospitals in Afghanistan continue to treat patients with Covid-19, with 33 others forced to close in recent months due to a lack of doctors, medicines, and even heat. This comes as the number of reported coronavirus cases in the economically stricken country has risen dramatically.
Due to a scarcity of fuel, personnel at Kabul’s only Covid-19 treatment hospital can only heat the building at night, even when winter temperatures drop below freezing during the day.
Patients are wrapped with thick blankets. Dr. Mohammed Gul Liwal, the organization’s director, stated that they require everything from oxygen to medical supplies.
The Covid-19 ward is almost always full as the Covid-19 cases rage. Before late January, the hospital was getting one or two new coronavirus patients a day. In the past two weeks, 10 to 12 new patients have been admitted daily.
“The situation is worsening day by day. Since the Taliban takeover almost six months ago, hospital employees have received only one month’s salary, in December,” said Liwal.
Notably, Afghanistan’s health-care system, which has relied almost exclusively on international donor money for nearly two decades, has been destroyed since the Taliban seized power in August following the tumultuous end to the US-led 20-year mission. Afghanistan’s economy collapsed after foreign assets worth over $10 billion were blocked and financial aid to the government was mostly discontinued.
The country’s humanitarian crisis has been exacerbated by the breakdown of the health sector. Approximately 90% of the population lives in poverty, and at least a million children face famine as a result of their families’ inability to afford food.
The World Health Organisation now says the country will get the kits by the end of February.
“Between Jan 30 and Feb 5, public laboratories in Afghanistan tested 8,496 samples, of which nearly half were positive for Covid-19. Those numbers translate into a 47. 4% positivity rate,” said WHO.
As of Tuesday, the WHO recorded 7,442 deaths and close to 167,000 cases since the beginning of the pandemic almost two years ago.These low estimates are thought to be the result of substantial under-reporting in the absence of large-scale testing.
