KABUL: The Afghan capital is on the verge of a cholera epidemic with more than 2,000 suspected cases and eight deaths in recent weeks, a health worker in Kabul warned on Monday. “An epidemic is about to break out here. Over two thousand cases have been reported so far that would meet the case definition of cholera,” said Fred Hartman, technical director for the US-backed Rural Expansion of Afghanistan’s Community-based Health Care programme.

Mr Hartman, who has been directly involved with efforts to contain the outbreak, said that eight or nine people had died in the past two weeks, and warned the disease could spread quickly throughout the city’s 4 million people. His warning was contested by Afghanistan’s health ministry, which claimed there had been no fatalities from cholera. On Sunday , health ministry official Ahmid Shah Shukomand said that the outbreak had been contained and there was no risk of the disease spreading.

“We had about 200 to 300 cases, but they were discharged from hospitals after treatment,” Mr Shukomand said. He reiterated those comments today, and said even those few hundred people suspected of having cholera have not been confirmed as suffering from the illness. He said authorities had launched a campaign urging people to boil drinking water, wash vegetables before eating them and wash their hands regularly.

Health ministry workers have chlorinated wells throughout the city, he added. Mr Hartman said the government was well equipped to deal with the outbreak and had set up an emergency task force to ensure that hospitals have the necessary equipment and medicine to treat patients. He said the disease had been detected in wells around the city, the source of drinking water for most of the city’s residents, as well as irrigation ditches. Cholera is a major killer in developing countries, where it is spread mainly through contaminated food or water. The bacterium attacks the intestine and causes severe diarrhoea and dehydration.

A spokesman for Unicef said the last cholera outbreak in Kabul was in 2003 when there were 7,000 suspected cases. But he said the government was fast to respond and the disease quickly disappeared after wells were chlorinated.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service