Cold weather raises health concerns

With the onset of winter, vulnerable sections of the Afghan population - women, children and displaced people - face respiratory diseases, a major cause of mortality in most of Afghanistan. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has reported the death of some 164 people, mostly children in the displacement camps around the northern city of Konduz. "We have received verbal reports from the authorities in Konduz that some 164 people died in displaced people camps since its fall to anti-Taliban forces four weeks earlier," Dr Rana Kakar, an emergency relief official with WHO told IRIN on Wednesday in Pakistan's capital Islamabad. She added that the situation in Konduz was not much different from the rest of Afghanistan where pneumonia and other respiratory infections were a major cause of death, particularly in children. Afghanistan has one of the highest mortality rates in the world with some 250 children out of every 1,000 dying before they reach the age of five. "Apart from respiratory infections, maternal and infant mortality and diarrhoea are the major health problems in Afghanistan," she said, adding that the prevalence of malaria had gone down after peaking in summer and late autumn. The interim administration that assumed office on 22 December faces the daunting challenge of rehabilitating the whole healthcare system in Afghanistan. To help this process, WHO is planning to provide emergency health kits to district health facilities managed by the Afghan ministry of health. "The big challenge in the coming six months will be to coordinate the whole health system in Afghanistan in partnership with aid community and the interim administration," Kakar explained. Analysing the health situation in Afghanistan, Dr Ghulam Sarwar Hemati, a health advisor to the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, an international NGO providing health care assistance to Afghans, told IRIN that after meeting the emergency needs of clean drinking water, food, shelter and sanitation, Afghanistan would need specialist health care personnel and extensive training for medical staff. He maintained that besides focusing on primary health care, the NGOs should also initiate establishing and rehabilitating small hospitals with adequate facilities. "Building a viable health care network will require constructing and strengthening such institutions," he said.