In Afghanistan’s Earthquake-Shattered Villages, A Doctor Treats Wounds and Infections, Hears Stories of Loss

When Dr. Obaidurahman Yousafi remembers the aftermath, he remembers the shrouds.

On August 31, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan, killing more than 2,200 people, destroying whole villages, and displacing tens of thousands. A few days later, Dr. Yousafi arrived with a team of medical workers in Anderlechak, a village in the Sawkai District of hard-hit Kunar Province, and saw piles of material in front of the small local mosque. A resident explained that villagers had had to hurriedly find shrouds for approximately 85 people killed by the quake.

“I felt fear” seeing the piles of shrouds,” he explained in English. “This was a very dazzling story and memory for me.”

Dr. Yousafi is a physician with the Afghanistan Islamic Medical Association, a nonprofit group. Since September 5, AIMA workers have been providing medical care to Afghan people in earthquake-affected villages: treating injuries and infections, caring for pregnant and lactating women, and providing medicine to patients with chronic diseases.

Speaking to Direct Relief both in English and with the aid of a translator, he described scenes of urgent need and harrowing loss.

AIMA’s group of providers split up: One team quickly established a stationary clinic, which Dr. Yousafi heads, in the Osmane displacement camp in Khas Kunar District, while a mobile team travels to hard-to-reach villages in the mountainous area using an off-roading vehicle.

AIMA’s earthquake response teams were equipped by a 17-pallet emergency shipment from Direct Relief. The shipment contained about 8,300 pounds of antibiotics, prenatal vitamins, oral rehydration salts, water purification tablets, prenatal vitamins, inhalers, medications, insulin, and other supplies for chronic disease management – about $6 million in wholesale value.

The supplies were received and distributed by the Afghanistan AMOR Health Organization (AAHO), a long-term Direct Relief partner and one of the few NGOs in the country that can receive international humanitarian support. Over the past 12 months, Direct Relief has provided $460,000 in material medical aid to Afshar Hospital, which AAHO operates in Kabul.

Earthquakes happen frequently in Afghanistan. Even at relatively moderate magnitudes, they are a serious threat to the country’s rural provinces, where buildings are often informally constructed from easily available materials and highly vulnerable to collapse. Because this earthquake occurred when people were sleeping at home, the death toll was particularly high, and women and children were especially affected, witnesses have reported.

Mountainous terrain and damaged roads can cut vulnerable communities off from rescue and aid, as this quake did. And even without the added impact of natural disasters, the Afghan people experience high levels of poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. The United Nations estimates that more than 23 million individuals – over half the country’s population – urgently need humanitarian assistance.

Adding to the humanitarian need, over 2.2 million Afghans have returned to the country from Pakistan and Iran this year – often involuntarily. Thousands of returnees from Pakistan currently live in earthquake-devastated areas.

Asked about reports that many women have been unable to access medical care after the earthquake, Dr. Yousafi said it was “a true story.” To ensure that women in displacement camps and affected villages could receive primary and maternal healthcare, AIMA’s medical team included several female members: two physicians, a midwife, and a nurse.

Pregnant and lactating women in these areas had low levels of iron and other nutritional deficiencies, Dr. Yousafi reported, making prenatal vitamins and other nutritional support an urgent need.

He estimated that the two teams had treated more than 1,250 people thus far, in an October 13 conversation.

Many of the people treate by AIMA’s team have experienced horrors. One young boy, trapped under collapsed wood for about 18 hours, had a fractured leg and other injuries. After being airlifted to a hospital for treatment, he was returned to the Osmane displacement camp.

AIMA staff changed his dressings every day, Dr. Yousafi recalled: “Now he is completely healthy.”

A man treated for a fractured femur had lost his wife, four sons, and two daughters during the earthquake. Their deaths happened right in front of him, he told Dr. Yousafi.

“This story was very important for me,” the physician recalled. Many of his patients had devastating injuries and serious health issues, and many had lost numerous family members.

“They have very great difficulty living,” he said.

Arifa Dashte contributed translation services and interviewing to this story.