KABUL, May 5: World Health Organization officials warned on Sunday that cases of a disabling and disfiguring skin disease have reached epidemic proportions in Kabul.

At least 100,000 residents in the capital are carrying the disease, cutaneous leishmaniasis, which is transmitted through sand- fly bites.

WHO spokesman Loretta Hieber Girardet said the beginning in June of the five month long sandfly season combined with the lack of medical treatment and mass migration of Afghans displaced by war threatens to carry the disease to areas outside of Kabul, Mazar-i- Sharif and Kandahar where it is not normally found.

“The World Health Organization is trying assist local health officials to limit the spread of the disease but that’s very unlikely unfortunately because the proper measures have not been put in place over the last decade,” she said. “So, what we’re reaching right now is a pandemic, which means the disease will spread to other countries as well.”

The disease, which causes disfiguring skin lesions, was fully under control in Pakistan until the latest migrations of Afghans into Northwest Frontier Province and Sindh, where a total of 14,000 new cases have been reported in the past year, she said.

Though not life threatening it has widespread social implications both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Women who contract leishmaniasis are not allowed to breast feed their children and their husbands will have no contact with them.

It is very difficult for a young woman carrying the life-long scars, which are typically found on the face and neck because the fly usually bites at night, to get married she said.

The disease incubates in those areas where there is poor hygiene and no organized waste removal. One-third the size of a typical mosquito, sand flies have sophisticate receptors that cause it to home in on and bite the lesions. Leishmaniasis is passed along to each uninfected person the sand fly bites.

It does respond to drug treatments however there is a severe shortage of the medicine available and little donor interest.

“The problem is that money has been requested over the last decade to control this disease but there wasn’t a lot of donor interest in Afghanistan at all,” she said. “But now it has reached important, epidemic proportions because proper control measures were never put into place.”—dpa