Critically ill Afghans suffer as Taliban tighten Pakistan border

areed Ullah has crossed Afghanistan’s border to Pakistan 10 times for treatment for his three- time-old son, Taha, who has thalassaemia major, an inherited blood complaint. Up until the Taliban preemption in August he’d noway endured a problem, but when he tried to conveyance via the Torkham crossing late last month, he was stopped by the Taliban from entering.

Croakers and family members of cases say conventions at the border have changed since the Taliban preemption, which has made it more delicate for Afghan cases to seek lifesaving care in Pakistan. “ There’s no system, still,” said Ijaz Ali Khan, the author and president of Hamza Foundation, a charity organisation in Peshawar that provides treatment for thalassaemia and other blood diseases.

Afghanistan’s healthcare system, which formerly suffered from a deficit of specialised croakers and well- equipped installations, has been critically wounded. Funding cuts from transnational benefactors have led to a dearth of medical inventories and outfit. Some croakers left during the early days of the Taliban rule, and others lost jobs at hospitals that could no longer go to pay them. The head of the World Health Organization said late last month that Afghanistan’s health system was on the point of collapse.

Before the Taliban took over, cases from Afghanistan regularly crossed into Pakistan for treatment. Peshawar, a megacity just over 30 country miles (50 km) from the Torkham crossing, has entered large figures of Afghan cases in the history at charity hospitals that were set up in part to treat people injured in fighting across the border. Due to blood force dearths and limited figures of treatment centres for thalassaemia and haemophilia inside Afghanistan, people with these diseases also routinely seek care in Pakistan.

Passage to Pakistan for these cases wasn’t preliminarily an issue, Khan said. Hamza Foundation would issue a letter saying that the case was coming to Pakistan to admit treatment. Since the foundation is a well- known reality in the region, border officers on both sides would let them cross with ease.

“ They would allow all the cases. But now they aren’t allowing,” said Dr Tariq Khan, the medical director at Hamza Foundation.
When Abdul Latif Hashmi tried to cross at the Chaman-Spin Boldak crossing with his 50- time-old mama, he was stopped and questioned by Taliban members who didn’t believe he was taking her to the sanitarium in Pakistan. “ They would hit us on the border,” he said of the Taliban. “ They said we were going overseas, not for medical care.”

In the area where he lives in Herat, in western Afghanistan, Hashmi said there was a deficit of specialised croakers who could treat his mama, which is why he decided to take her to Pakistan for cancer treatment in a sanitarium in Karachi. Since last November, he’d crossed from Chaman-Spin Boldak with his mama every two to three months without issue. This time, Hashmi and his mama awaited at the border for six days before they paid a runner there to help them get across.
Pakistan is technically allowing passage for cases from Afghanistan seeking medical care, but the country has also tensed its border protocols since the Taliban preemption, which has made conveyance much more complicated. Torkham allows entry only to Afghans with valid trip documents. Chaman, which generally allows conveyance for Afghans from certain areas near the border, has also started administering visa rules more rigorously. Both crossings have been closed intermittently over the once two months.

At Torkham, another consequence of the Taliban preemption is a detention for families staying to admit the bodies of loved bones who failed abroad. A private ambulance motorist said he used to be suitable to bring bodies directly across the border but now must stay for concurrence from the Taliban to shift the cadaver to a vehicle staying on the other side.
Fareed estimated there were 150 cases with critical medical problems including cancer, heart problems, and thalassaemia who were also staying in the area of the border where he stayed on the Afghan side. Among the Hamza Foundation cases who were originally blocked from crossing into Pakistan was a pregnant woman whose foetus latterly tested positive for thalassaemia.