FAIZABAD (Pajhwok): Health and children of respiratory diseases, mostly in Wakhan district, of northeastern Badakhshan province, but local people put the death toll at over 60.
Dr. Nawshin Gahr Karimi, deputy public health director of Badakhshan province, told Pajhwok Afghan News that 35 people including women, children and elderly men lost their lives to respiratory diseases such as pneumonia over the last two and a half months in the province.
She said two health teams with needed medicines arrived in Wakhan district last week and the situation was currently under control.
Karimi rejected rumors that the deaths were caused by coronavirus and said their assessments showed other respiratory diseases had caused the deaths.
However, local people and deputy provincial council head said the number of people who died of such diseases was double compared to figures provided by public health officials.
Talabuddin Qaderi, deputy head of the provincial council of Badakhshan, said that the public health department had been neglecting sending medical teams to Wakhan district.
He said more than 60 people had lost their lives to respiratory diseases in the province, rejecting the figures of public health officials.
“Unfortunately the public health department neglected transferring their health teams to Wakhan district, they recently sent two teams after 65 deaths and the passage of two and a half months,” he said.
Qaderi said many people lost their lives to respiratory diseases in Wakhan district every year and it was mostly due to remoteness of healthcare centers and shortage of medicines.
“I was born in Wakhan but in my life I never saw a person operated for appendix or a pregnant woman is treated here, patients are taken to the provincial capital for treatment. Unfortunately they lose their lives at home because the provincial capital is 400 kilometers away from the district,” he said. He asked the public health department to create healthcare clinics in the district.
Ahmad Khan, a resident of Gazkhan village of Wakhan district, said that dozens of people had contracted respiratory diseases in the district over the last two months.
He said more than 65 people, including men, women and children, lost their lives due to these diseases in many parts of the district.
About mobile teams, he said, “Mobile teams cannot go to remote villages because the routes are blocked due to heavy snowfalls.”
He also asked the public health department to create healthcare centers in remote parts of the district.
Mds/ma
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