Afghan Officials Warn Outbreak Of Disease In Earthquake Survivors

Afghan citizen illustration (unsplash)

JAKARTA - Thousands of people affected by a deadly earthquake in eastern Afghanistan need clean water and food and are at risk of contracting disease, an Afghan health ministry official said on Sunday.

The remarks came days after a UN agency warned of a cholera outbreak in the region.

At least 1,000 people were killed, 2,000 injured and 10,000 homes destroyed in Wednesday's quake. After the quake, the United Nations humanitarian office (OCHA) warned that the subsequent cholera outbreak was of particular and serious concern.

"People are in dire need of food and clean water," Afghan health ministry spokesman Sharafat Zaman told Reuters, adding officials had been administering medicine for now but dealing with those who had lost their homes would be a challenge.

"We ask the international community, humanitarian organizations to help us for food and medicine, the survivors may get sick because they don't have proper houses and shelter to live in," he said.

The disaster is a major test for Afghanistan's hardline Taliban rulers, who have been shunned by many foreign governments because of concerns about human rights since they took control of the country last year.

Helping thousands of Afghans is also a challenge for countries that have imposed sanctions on Afghan government agencies and banks, cutting off direct aid, leading to a humanitarian crisis even before the earthquake.

The United Nations and several other countries have already sent aid to the affected areas, with more to arrive in the coming days.

The Afghan Taliban government has called for the lifting of sanctions and the lifting of the freeze on billions of dollars in central bank assets held in Western financial institutions.

In Kabul, the hospitals that first treated war victims have opened their wards to earthquake victims, but most people remain in the earthquake-ravaged areas.

"Our house was destroyed, we had no tents ... there were many children with us. We had nothing. Our food and clothes ... everything was under the rubble," Hazrat Ali, 18, told the Reuters team in Wor Kali, a village in the Barmal district was hardest hit.

"I have lost my brothers, my heart is broken. Now it's just the two of us. I love them very much," he said.