The facility,called the Afghan Japan Communicable Disease Hospital,has 100 beds. The COVID-19 ward is almost always full. Before late January,the hospital was getting one or two new coronavirus patients a day. In the past two weeks,10 to 12 new patients have been admitted daily,Liwal said.
“The situation is worsening day by day,” said Liwal,speaking inside a chilly conference room. Since the Taliban takeover of the country six months ago,hospital employees have received only one month’s salary,in December.
The healthcare system,which survived for nearly two decades almost entirely on international donor funding,has been devastated since the Taliban returned to power in mid-August,amid the chaotic end to the 20-year US-led intervention. The economy crashed after nearly $US10 billion ($14 billion) in assets abroad were frozen and financial aid to the government was largely halted.
The health system’s collapse has only worsened the humanitarian crisis in the country. Roughly 90 per cent of the population has fallen below the poverty level,and with families barely able to afford food,at least a million children are threatened with starvation.
The Omicron variant is hitting Afghanistan hard,Liwal said,but he admits it is just a guess because the country is still waiting for kits that test specifically for the variant. They were supposed to arrive before the end of last month,said Public Health Ministry spokesman Dr Javid Hazhir. The World Health Organisation now says Afghanistan will get the kits by the end of February.
The organisation says that between January 30 and February 5,public laboratories in Afghanistan tested 8496 samples,of which nearly half,were positive for COVID-19. Those numbers translate into a 47. 4 per cent positivity rate,it said.