Afghan hospital wards fill with children suffering from pneumonia

KABUL, Jan 5 (Reuters) – In an extremely cold room at the start of winter in Kabul, Maryam, 22, sat with her baby bundled up in a red jumper as he coughed days after being released for the third time from a hospital ward for suspected pneumonia.

Every time 10-month-old Rahmat’s parents bring him home from the crowded but warmer hospital, they say he falls ill again. The parents said they were spending whatever they could from their dwindling income to try to heat the room, which drops below zero at night.

“I’m afraid, it’s only the beginning of winter, what will happen? Maryam said, saying the family could only buy charcoal in small quantities and had to cut back on food expenses to afford even after her husband lost his construction job.

The family is one of many families in Afghanistan who cannot afford proper heating, often having to choose between food and fuel as an economic crisis hits the country.

Doctors and aid workers say thousands of children are hospitalized with pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses caused by the cold and malnutrition.

The crisis, according to aid agencies, is likely to worsen. The ban on female NGO workers led more than 180 international organizations to suspend operations during the crucial winter months, saying they could not operate in the conservative country without female staff to reach women and children.

Even before that, more than half the population depended on humanitarian aid after the economic shock precipitated by the Taliban takeover in 2021 caused Afghanistan’s GDP to plummet by 20% last year.

Afghanistan has been hit by a cut in development spending and foreign government spending, the application of Western sanctions and the freezing of the assets of the country’s central bank which has severely hampered the banking system.

“Our patients have increased compared to the past, the main reason is the economy,” said Mohammad Arif Hassanzai, chief of internal medicine at Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul.

Hospital figures showed more than 6,700 children were admitted in November for pneumonia, coughs, asthma and other respiratory conditions, up from around 3,700 in the same month the year before.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which supports several hospitals in Afghanistan, said that even before the winter months it had seen a 50% increase in the number of children under five admitted for pneumonia in 2022 compared to the previous year.

“People have died of pneumonia this year, including children,” said Lucien Christen, ICRC spokesman in Kabul, adding that malnutrition contributed to weakened immune systems in children.

Aid workers said pollution had also worsened this year as more people burned rubbish and plastic for warmth.

In a hospital ward for pneumonia patients, babies lie two or three to a bed, with worried parents and a handful of overworked medical staff watching over them. Some mothers held tiny oxygen masks to infants’ faces, while fathers crowded the hallways outside.

Suddenly, a clamor broke out. A month-old baby, Mohammad, stopped breathing and his lips turned blue. Her panicked uncle, holding the child in a green blanket, was directed to a specialist emergency unit two floors below. He rushed downstairs, as the baby’s mother ran behind in tears.

In the high-dependency unit, Mohammad was hooked up to an oxygen tube through his nose. The doctor said he was in critical condition and would need five days to stabilize.

His mother stayed at the baby’s bedside. Her husband had lost his job and they couldn’t afford the heating, she said. Seeing her son stop breathing, she said, “I felt like my own heart stopped.”

(This story has been reclassified to correct a typo in paragraph 10)

Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield and Mohammad Yunus Yawar in Kabul; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan

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