Afghanistan's health system on brink of collapse due to sanctions on Taliban, warn experts

Amid outbreaks of disease and an escalating malnutrition crisis, international experts have yet again warned that large parts of Afghanistan’s health system are on the brink of collapse. According to The Guardian, Dr Paul Spiegel, director of the Centre for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University, said that on his recent trip to the war-ravaged nation, he had seen public hospitals lacking fuel, medicines, hygiene products and even basic items such as colostomy bags. Spiegel said that even the COVID-19 response has almost hit a halt. 

“It’s really bad and it is going to get a lot worse,” Spiegel said while calling for a more nuanced response to western sanctions in order to avert a deeper public health disaster. Speaking to the media outlet, the former chief of public health at the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) added that there are six simultaneous disease outbreaks - cholera, massive measles outbreak, polio, malaria and dengue fever - in addition to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. 

Spiegel informed that some parts of the primary healthcare system in Afghanistan were being funded through a two-decades-old scheme, however, large parts remained largely unsupported. He said that despite health officials, international organisations and NGOs restarting programmes, the nation is dealing with “acute emergencies” along with “basic” health issues. For example, Spiegel stated that there are supposed to be 39 hospitals dealing with the coronavirus cases of which only 7.7% are fully functioning. 

“It’s not just the hospitals. It’s the whole thing that glues together public health systems: surveillance systems, testing and there’s very little oxygen to treat those who do have Covid,” the health expert told The Guardian.  

He described the main referral hospitals for infectious diseases in Kabul as “on its knees” and added, “None of the staff has received salaries for months, though most are still coming in. There is hardly any medicine and they are cutting trees in the courtyard to heat the rooms because there is no gas. They’ve also sent their ventilators to the Afghan Japan hospital to treat Covid cases but that is also struggling.”

Spiegel urges West to find different approach 

Outside Kabul, Spiegel said that the situation in other major Afghan cities is even worse. He said that there is insufficient water and soap for hygiene protocols. Therefore, in the wake of a deepening humanitarian crisis, Spiegel urged the West to find a different approach to the imposition of sanctions on the Taliban. There needs to be a much more nuanced way of implementing sanctions than using such a blunt instrument, he said. 

“While understanding concerns about the Taliban … the reality is that a lot of people will die because of them,” Spiegel added. 

(Image: AP)