21 Covid-19 hospitals shut due to lack of fund: MoPH

KABUL (Pajhwok): The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) is concerned about the closure of 21 Covid-19 hospitals due to lack of financial resources, however the ministry says a number of international organizations are ready to fund some hospitals.

Before the fall of the previous administration, hundreds of millions of US dollars had been provided to Afghanistan for the fight against coronavirus.

Also, former President Ashraf Ghani had allocated 1.2 billion dollars from the government budget to fight the virus.

However, with the fall of the previous government on August 15, the US froze nearly $10 billion assets of Afghanistan and world community aid was stopped as well.

More than half of Covid hospitals shut down currently

Dr. Javed Hajir, a spokesman for MoPH, told Pajhwok Afghan News that after the outbreak of the coronavirus in the country, the ministry established a total of 38 hospitals to treat Covid infected patients.

He said of the 38 hospitals, 17 are operational and the remaining 21 have been closed.

However, he did not name the inactive hospitals, but said that active hospitals reported new cases and fatalities of the virus.

According to him, the ministry is in talks with various international donors to reactivate these hospitals while a number of organizations have agreed to fund some hospitals.

Hajir added the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) were among the organizations ready to fund a number of Covid hospitals.

The spokesman said that the IOM had taken the responsibility for funding hospitals in Nangarhar, Helmand, Herat and Kandahar provinces.

WHO and UNICEF have also pledged to fund four to five hospitals each.

He said adequate staff was available for coronavirus treatment, but said the main problem in the health sector, especially with regard to coronavirus, was the lack of financial resources and efforts were being made to address the issue.

According to him, the World Bank had pledged to fund coronavirus hospitals until 2024, but after the political changes, it stopped providing aid and the current problem was the financial problem in the health sector.

Based MoPH figures, since the outbreak of the coronavirus in Afghanistan, 157,967 positive cases have been registered. Of these cases 145,492 people have been recovered and 7,354 others died of the infection.

sa/ma