Afghans’ resources scant as covid hits

KABUL, Afghanistan — Only five hospitals in Afghanistan still offer covid-19 treatment, with 33 others having been forced to close in recent months for lack of doctors, medicines and even heating.

This comes as the economically devastated nation is hit by a steep rise in the number of reported coronavirus cases.

At Kabul’s only covid-19 treatment hospital, staff can heat the building only at night because of lack of fuel, even as winter temperatures drop below freezing during the day. Patients are bundled under heavy blankets. Its director, Dr. Mohammed Gul Liwal, said they need everything, from oxygen to medicine supplies.

The facility, called the Afghan Japan Communicable Disease Hospital, has 100 beds. The covid-19 ward is almost always full. 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, Liwal said.

“The situation is worsening day by day,” said Liwal, speaking inside a chilly conference room.

Most of the hospital’s 200 employees come to work regularly despite months without pay. Since the Taliban takeover of the country six months ago, hospital employees have received only one month’s salary, in December.

A U.S.-based charity affiliated with Johns Hopkins University provided two months funding, which gave the hospital staff their December salary and a promise of another paycheck in January. The public health ministry is now in negotiations with the World Health Organization to take over the cost of running the hospital through June, Liwal said.

Afghanistan’s health care system, which survived for nearly two decades almost entirely on international donor funding, has been devastated since the Taliban returned to power in mid-August amid the chaotic end to the 20-year U.S.-led intervention. Afghanistan’s economy crashed after nearly $10 billion in assets abroad were frozen and financial aid to the government was largely halted.

The omicron variant is hitting Afghanistan hard, Liwal said, but he admits it is just a guess because the country is still waiting for kits that test specifically for the variant.

They were supposed to arrive before the end of last month, said Public Health Ministry spokesman Dr. Javid Hazhir. WHO now says Afghanistan will get the kits by the end of February.

As of Tuesday, WHO recorded 7,442 deaths and close to 167,000 infections since the start of the pandemic. In the absence of large-scale testing, these relatively low figures are believed to be a result of extreme under-reporting.

Meanwhile, the new Taliban administration says it is trying to push vaccines on a skeptical population that often sees them as dangerous.

With 3.2 million vaccine doses in stock, Hazhir said the administration has launched a campaign through mosques, clerics and mobile vaccine clinics to get more people vaccinated. Currently, just over 27% of Afghanistan’s 38 million people have been vaccinated, most with the single-dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine.

Liwal