No medical services: 13 Badakhshan kids die

FAIZABAD (PAN): More than a dozen children have died over the past one and a half month in northeastern Badakhshan’s Khwahan district due to insufficient medicines and lack of medical services, a public representative said on Sunday.

Maulvi Abdulhai Tayebi, the provincial council chief, told Pajhwok Afghan News he learnt about the deaths in Seldan and Hawis Shah villages when he paid a visit to the town recently.

He said the children had been suffering from cough and chest infections amid severe cold weather conditions.

“When I reached the area, local residents were protesting. They asked me why their representatives have ignored their problems,” Tayebi said.

The public representative claimed a health clinic in the district had been built at a cost of $440,000 three years ago, but now the facility was on the verge of collapse because substandard materials had been used in its construction.

He said the clinic had only one nurse, but no medicine in a town of 32000 people near the Tajikistan border.

Provincial public health director Dr. Noor Ahmad Khawrai confirmed problems facing residents of the district in the health sector, but expressed his unawareness about the deaths of children.

He promised sending a team of experts from Faizadad, the provincial capital, to the Khwahan district to investigate the deaths.

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