The mysterious Covid-like disease outbreak in Afghanistan swept through the Wakhan district of the mountainous Pamir region over the last fortnight. Turkish state-run news outlet Anadolu Agency reports that at least 21 people have died due to the mysterious disease in the country.
Cases have all begun in the Wakhan region, which borders Tajikistan, and Pakistan Health officials have been dispatched to the region to investigate the nature of the disease outbreak.
This photo taken on July 21, 2022 shows guardians sitting next to children in the malnutrition ward at the Boost Hospital, run by Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF), in Lashkar Gah, Helmand.
Mystery Disease Very Similar to COVID-19
MailOnline reported that health officials in Afghanistan have classified the mystery disease as "quite similar" to Covid, which was caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and is responsible for a strange pandemic that started in the city of Wuhan in China in 2020.
Local reports said that the first fatality happened a fortnight ago. Due to this, Kyrgyzstan has sent a delegate to the region despite not bordering Afghanistan amid concerns that the disease could spread further.
On the other hand, Wakhan is sparsely inhabited with a small stretch of land bordered by the Pamir Mountains. Before this current health crisis, cholera and polio epidemics recently struck Afghanistan.
British health officials are also keeping an eye out for instances of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, a viral illness spread primarily by ticks that may be deadly in up to 40% of cases. It comes after the Taliban-controlled Bakhtar News Agency claimed last week that at least 50 youngsters died from respiratory ailments in the Baghlan district of northern Afghanistan in only a month.
Baghlan Hospital authorities acknowledged to the agency that 1,000 youngsters in the area had been sick with respiratory infections in the previous month.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), supporting 33 hospitals in Afghanistan, also stated in November that the number of children treated for pneumonia had increased by more than 50% in 2022 compared to the same time last year. The ICRC data provided earlier this month also revealed that pneumonia infections in the country increased by 35% in a year to 213,049 in 2022.
READ ALSO: Africa Once Again Battles Polio Outbreaks After Two Years of Declaring Free From Any of Its Types
Health Status of Afghanistan
As an unknown disease is spreading across Afghanistan, Taliban authorities said that clinics in certain provinces are seeing a sharp increase in the number of people suffering from this mysterious infection. As per The Press United, two patients have already died last December with local reports noting that both casualties are children.
Afghanistan is one of the least developed countries in the world with a public healthcare system that is almost entirely funded by foreign donors. But when the Taliban seized power after the US withdrew in 2021, the funding also stopped.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has now considered the country's health system as "on the brink of collapse." The UN health agency reports that fewer than one in five state clinics are still open and diseases, such as polio, are now an epidemic.
Doctors have blamed poor hygiene for the ongoing health crisis. Last summer, the Zabul Province was hit by an unknown disease that affected 200 people in Shahjoy after symptoms of cholera were reported in May.
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