Military

DATE=01/10/02

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

NUMBER=5-50852

TITLE=W-H-O / AFGHANISTAN

BYLINE=DALE GAVLAK

DATELINE=GENEVA

CONTENT=

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INTRO: After years of being cut off from the rest of the world, a clear picture of the health care situation in Afghanistan is only now emerging. New figures gathered by the World Health Organization show that, by any measure, Afghanistan is a country desperately in need of every kind of medical aid. V-O-A's Dale Gavlak has more from Geneva.

TEXT: The health statistics for Afghanistan are staggering. One in four children dies before the age of five. Child-bearing mothers have the second-highest mortality rate in the world, just below Sierra Leone in Africa.

The average life expectancy for Afghan women is 47 years of age, but that is four years higher than the life expectancy of men, 43. Some six million Afghans have little or no access to any health services.

But officials at the World Health Organization are working with the new Afghan government to improve these figures.

They say the newly appointed minister of public health, Dr. Sohaila Siddiq, has made it clear she wants to work with W-H-O. One of her top priorities is rehabilitating the country's hospital facilities, many of which lack beds, operating equipment and even heat.

Fadela Chaib is a W-H-O official who recently returned from a visit to Afghanistan, where she met with Dr. Siddiq.

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She said, "We need W-H-O and other organizations to help us with the training of health workers." Secondly she said, "It is important for us to control communicable diseases," and she stressed the need for more help in controlling for example, tuberculosis and malaria. She also said that maternal and child health is very important and we should assist them in those two areas.

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/// OPT /// W-H-O and the United Nation's children's agency, UNICEF, are also sponsoring mass immunization campaigns against polio and measles in Afghanistan.

W-H-O's polio information officer, Christine McNab, says the health agency vaccinated some five million Afghan children against polio this past autumn.

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We are certainly hoping that security improves and when it does nationwide campaigns can be conducted again. Right now there are two more rounds are scheduled for this spring. The target population is about 5.4 million children and we expect to have good success there.

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W-H-O says it hopes to eliminate polio in Afghanistan this year. Eleven cases were reported last year, compared with 120 in 2000.

Ms. McNab says W-H-O and UNICEF also plan to vaccinate some nine million Afghan children against measles, which is a big killer in Afghanistan, taking the lives of 35-thousand children each year. /// END OPT ///

W-H-O, along with the U-N refugee agency, will also be working together to help rebuild a hospital in Afghanistan's Parwan province, northwest of Kabul. Fadela Chaib says Charikar hospital, which was built to serve 14 districts in the province, has been badly looted and right now has only one bed.

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No water, no electricity. The personnel is there but they have nothing. W-H-O decided with the help of U-N-H-C-R to try to rebuild the entire hospital because really it is very important for all the population of this area.

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A conference on rebuilding Afghanistan is taking place in Tokyo at the end of this month, and W-H-O officials say they hope the conference delegates will focus their attention on rebuilding Afghanistan's public health system. (Signed)

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