ASIA/AFGHANISTAN - The country is unprepared to face the Coronavirus crisis

Wednesday, 25 March 2020 coronavirus civil society healthcare talibans

AFGHANISTAN

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Kabul (Agenzia Fides) - "Afghanistan's health facilities are unable to deal with a pandemic like the Covid-19 pandemic. At the moment even the West is in difficulty, so we can only remotely imagine what could happen in a situation like the Afghan one: except for cities, medical equipment is lacking and it would be objectively difficult not only to apply, but also simply to communicate all the security measures that are currently being followed in Italy. It would be a challenge to be able to stop the life of a village and bring aid to it. I can hardly imagine Kabul being completely blocked". This is the comment released to Agenzia Fides by Barnabite Fr. Giuseppe Moretti, missionary in Afghanistan from 1990 to 2015, who assesses the consequences of a possible expansion of the Coronavirus infections in the Asian country.
To worsen the already precarious health situation, the Barnabite notes, there is the instability of the government, characterized by the dualism between elected president Ashraf Ghani and his opponent Abdullah Abdullah, both self-proclaimed winners of the last elections: "I wonder who will have to decide in a possible health crisis. The hope is that, faced with this problem, they can find a joint solution. We also hope that the Taliban have that minimum of humanity that allows the help and care of the sick".
Just a few days ago, the Taliban movement made it known that it will not hinder the access of staff from international organizations committed against the spread of Covid-19 in Afghanistan.
According to the World Health Organization, 34 people suffer from Coronavirus in Afghanistan. The latest cases concern two diplomats and four Italian soldiers and there is news of the first case in the capital Kabul.
There is no awareness of the risk associated with the pandemic in the country. As 25-year-old leader of the environmental movement "Friday For Future - Afghanistan", Qais Murshid tells Fides, in fact, "the first Afghan cases probably came from Iran: the border is crossed daily by about 15 thousand people, but here many have not yet taken the problem seriously". (LF-PA) (Agenzia Fides, 25/3/2020)