KABUL (SW) – Nearly 50,000 more people got infected with the tuberculosis in the year 2020, the health ministry said on Wednesday.
Acting Minister of Health Wahee Majrooh said in connection with the World Tuberculosis Day that up to 9,800 of these patients lost their lives to the disease in the past year, which is three times more than the deaths caused by coronavirus.
According to the head of the Ministry of Health, the coronavirus epidemic has negatively affected efforts to prevent tuberculosis, and many TB patients in the country have not been diagnosed and treated. “According to World Health Organization estimates of an outbreak of tuberculosis in Afghanistan, it was estimated that 73,000 Afghans were infected last year,” said Wahid Majrooh.
He added Afghanistan’s health system has been able to identify only about 50,000 due to the limitations created by the coronavirus. “About 20 percent of the victims are children.”
Majrooh added that a large number of TB patients are women and this figure reached 57% last year. Inadequate nutrition, low body immunity, and the lifestyle of women in Afghanistan increases their vulnerability to the disease, he said.
Meanwhile, Sima Samar, head of the Tuberculosis Control Board, said the national and international commitment to eradicating tuberculosis in Afghanistan was important and that support should continue to control and eradicate the disease. “Access to quality health services is a human right, and we must work to ensure that the patients have access to their basic rights”, she said.
World Health Organization (WHO) officials in Afghanistan said on the occasion that as the COVID-19 pandemic spread in Afghanistan, TB patients were marginalized, reducing their access to health care. The organization calls on foreign donors to continue their assistance to eradicate tuberculosis in Afghanistan.
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