AFGHANISTAN: Unidentified disease kills 40 in Ghowr Province

ISLAMBAD, 12 March 2002 (IRIN) - Some 40 people in the district of Teyvareh in Afghanistan's northwestern Ghowr Province have died of disease, a World Health Organisation (WHO) official in the capital, Kabul, confirmed to IRIN on Tuesday. "We are still not sure what these people died from, but we know that there is a high prevalence of scurvy [a vitamin C deficiency condition] there," a WHO representative, Rana Kakar, said. She added that it could have been pneumonia or diarrhoea, both of which can be easily prevented. The deaths were discovered when a team from the French nongovernmental organisation ACF travelled to the area last week to carry out an assessment, Kakar explained. However, the team ran into difficulties and was left snowbound. In response to this, WFP has flown two helicopters from the western province of Herat to Ghowr to rescue the ACF team, which comprises five national and two international staff members. Medical supplies, including vitamin C supplements, would also be flown to the affected area. On Tuesday, the WHO sent a medical team reinforced by Afghan health ministry support staff from Herat to Teyvareh to investigate the deaths. "We are hoping that they will be able to discover exactly how these deaths occurred and prevent more from happening," Kakar said. Some reports had suggested that there could be an outbreak of the highly contagious Congo fever in the district, a disease which brings about bleeding and leads to a gruesome death, but Kakar said this could not be confirmed. "The symptoms for scurvy are similar to those of Congo fever, and it is very difficult for us to say it is Congo fever until an assessment is carried out," she stressed. "It is a possibility, but we don't have enough evidence." At least 12 villages in the district of Teyvareh have been hit by the disease. People in the area were extremely malnourished with very little food to survive on, prompting fears of more deaths if they were not reached in time, Kakar noted.