The World Health Organisation (WHO) launched an urgent appeal on Friday for $1,2-million to treat tens of thousands of people infected with a disfiguring disease in the Afghan capital Kabul.
Some 200 000 people in the city are estimated by the United Nations (UN) health agency to be infected with leishmaniasis, which leads to disfiguring facial injuries and long-term disability, and is treatable with an injectable drug.
Philippe Desjeux, the head of WHO’s leishmaniases control programme, warned the disease could spread among returning refugees who are particulary susceptible to disease if no action is taken.
”We have now the problem of refugees coming back from Pakistan,” he told reporters.
”Three hundred thousand people are expected in Kabul to come back now, and these people are the first candidates to the disease,” he said.
Teaming up with the Afghan government and international non-governmental organisations, the Geneva-based WHO plans to buy drugs and insecticide-impregnated bednets as part of a two-year programme.
WHO is focusing first on Kabul, but said the disease also occurs in Herat, Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif to a lesser extent.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, WHO director-general, warned in a written statement of the need to grab the opportunity for immediate action to interrupt transmission and avoid a big increase in cases next year.
The form of leishmaniasis in question is passed from person to person via the bite of a sandfly and spreads quickly among a concentrated population, especially among the poor.
It breeds quickly in unsanitary conditions.
After biting an infected person, the sandfly spreads the disease each time it bites.
WHO said transmission occurred from May to October.
Leishmaniases in its different forms is endemic in 88 countries and it is believed that 12 million people worldwide are infected. – Sapa-AFP