The pandemic has had a big impact on Afghanistan. There have been 177,000 confirmed COVID cases and 7,600 deaths up to March 28 2022, though this is probably a significant under-count. Modelling by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation – although also unlikely to be highly accurate given the paucity of real-time data for Afghanistan – estimates that COVID had already killed close to 200,000 people by the beginning of 2022.
Since August 2021, the backdrop to Afghanistan’s pandemic has been the return of the fundamentalist Taliban as the political power in charge of the country. Thousands of civilians have fled the oppressive new regime, with over 10,000 people fleeing to Tajikistan alone. This adds to the 2.2 million refugees already living in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan, who had left the country in recent years due to its instability. Thousands have also been displaced internally since the Taliban gained power.
This creates a health problem. Disease outbreaks among these refugees and displaced people are highly likely. Crowded indoor settings of emergency shelters provide ideal conditions for infections to spread, including respiratory diseases like measles and COVID, as well as conditions such as diarrhoea and scabies.
