Afghanistan is now host to the world’s largest outbreak of the disease Leishmaniasis. Nicknamed “Kandahar Sore,” and “one year sore” in Afghanistan, it is now an epidemic. The disfiguring skin condition is caused by a parasite transmitted through fly bites. The parasite feeds, causing sores that constantly increase in size and eventually cause facial disfigurement and physical disability. Refugees and the homeless are at highest risk since they usually have to sleep on the ground or inhabit structures with unsanitary conditions. At night they are at the mercy of the sand fly, the most common carrier of the disease.
Its mere presence reflects the gravity of poor social conditions. Easily diagnosed and even easier to treat, lack of health care is the real cause.
It has infected over 100,000 in Kabul alone. Another 9,000 cases are reported in Kandahar and Mazar-I-Sharif. (“Leishmaniasis in Afghanistan Update” WHO Press Release 6/28/02)
The World Health Organization has asked the international community for $1.2 million dollars to fight the disease in war-torn Afghanistan.
“There are only medical supplies for 70,000 cases and we are expecting a quarter of a million this year,” said Hieber Girardet, a WHO spokesperson. “Leishmaniasis can be completely cured, provided the treatment is available.” (Agence France-Press 5/5/02)
The same common antibiotics sold at a CVS pharmacy cure this seemingly exotic disease. A bottle full of pills is all it takes to rid the body of the hungry flesh-eating parasites. The epidemic merely indicates the degree of poverty and isolation that Afghanistan’s population suffers this year.
Used properly,, $1.2 million dollars will go a long way towards improving health care in Afghanistan, a country with most of its population living on less than a quarter of a dollar per day.
Two years ago and on the other side of the Indian subcontinent, I spent a day volunteering at a free medical clinic in Varanasi, India. Most of the patients were afflicted with curable but neglected skin diseases such as leishmaniasis or leprosy.
They looked like their faces had melted. Every few days, an aid worker needed to trim the dead skin off of the edges of the sores with a scalpel to prevent infection.
The amount of blood and scar tissue in the dirt-floored tent was like something out of an explicitly gory horror movie. Inside I felt like a young child that had seen something too scary on TV.
What disturbed me long after my initial shock was the image of these horribly ill people coming in off the street, where they lived as homeless outcasts. A few neighborhood shops donated odds and ends to the clinic, but if we did not change their bandages, nobody would. These were the most neglected human beings I had ever seen in my life.
A similar fate seems to have fallen on the people of Afghanistan, who must now rely on the kindness of the international community to treat their ailments.