PRESS BRIEFING BY THE U.N. OFFICES FOR PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN (14 January 2002)

The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today’s briefing at the United Nations Information Center in Islamabad by the United Nations offices for Pakistanand Afghanistan (excluding question and answer session).

** Stephanie Bunker, Spokesperson,UN Coordinator’s Office for Afghanistan.

Ravan A. G. Farhadi, the Permanent Repr4esentativce of Afghanistan to the United Nations, on Friday presented his credentials to the Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Mr. Farhadi first presented his credentials to Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1993. Under the interim agreement for a new government in Afghanistan, in Bonn, he was requested to resubmit them. Mr. Farhadi has had a distinguished career as a member of the Afghan government and as a university professor in various parts of the world.

Meanwhile on Friday, the Security Council welcomed the positive changes in Afghanistan as a result of the collapse of the Taliban regime. They reiterated their support to the Interim Authority in Afghanistan in its efforts to return to country to peace.

Members also noted that in view of the latest political developments some measures imposed by resolutions 1267 and 1333 appear to have lost focus and need to be readjusted to the new realities. Members agreed to exclude the Central Bank of
Afghanistan from the list of measures specified in resolution 1267.

They remain deeply concerned about the grave humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. They also called for the international community to provide immediat3 assistance to the Interim Authority by contributing to the Afghan Interim Authority Fund.

** Chulho Hyun, Spokesperson, UNICEF Afghanistan

Good afternoon. The focus today: the latest items on UNICEF activities in the Mazar region. 35 health facilities, at both the provincial and district levels, will be receiving much-needed supplies from UNICEF in the coming days. Among the items are Basic and Supplementary Health Kits, and Traditional Birth Attendant Kits. We’re talking about antibiotics, medicines to treat skin disease and eye infections, Oral Re-hydration Salts, gauzes and bandages, soap, weight scales and so on.

UNICEF-supported orientations for doctors and pharmacists, on the use of emergency drugs, are ongoing. The most recent session, held earlier this month, was attended by 12 doctors and pharmacists affiliated with the Ministry of Public Health.

UNICEF and the NGO Action Contre la Faim are working to distribute nearly 5,500 kilograms of the high-protein porridge UNIMIX and more than 400 kilograms of oil for the Supplementary Feeding Center in the Sholgara District of Balkh Province. This is where moderately malnourished children go for treatment and to receive food materials.

600,000 doses of measles vaccine and syringes were delivered recently to the Northern Region, and measles immunization is ready to begin in Kunduz and Takhar. Training of vaccination teams took place last week.

Meanwhile, UNICEF staff members are currently in Faryab Province to assess needs among thedrought-affected population, and water supply rehabilitation needs in Mymana City. Drilling and construction are also ongoing at 35 locations in Mazar City to work on 35 water wells.

In the area of assisting the recovery of the Northern Region’s education sector, UNICEF is finalizing a list of all schools in Mazar for the distribution of education supplies and learning materials, in addition to supporting facility repairs for those schools that need them the most.

84 teachers from the local education department last week took part in a six-day training course on teaching methods, conducted by senior trainers affiliated with UNICEF. Overall, the country has only about 20,000 qualified teachers for primary education, but more than 4 million children in the primary school age group. Needless to say, a large number of teachers are going to be needed, and training to upgrade their skills is essential.

Related to the topic of education, UNICEF also welcomes the news that both female and male high school students in Mazar have taken their university entrance exam for the first time in three years. Now that the test has been administered, the students will await results to be publicized within the next three months in order to begin the academic year this spring.

** Yusuf Hassan, Spokesperson for UNHCR

During the weekend, the number of Afghans massed at the Chaman border post has risen sharply to 13,000. The refugees have been stuck on a desolate windswept place where temperatures drop below zero at night without proper shelter or adequate assistance for days. They are getting desperate and urgently need assistance.

Already, we have seen children with measles. Last night, two babies were born in the makeshift site, which is a temporary home for the thousands of who have been gathering there since 4 January. There is a very urgent need for the vulnerable to be allowed so that they can receive medical care. To avert a humanitarian disaster, we are urging the authorities to allow us to move the vulnerable especially women and children to refugee camp where they can be assisted.

UNHCR continues to provide high protein biscuits, dates and water and has distributed some blankets. A UNHCR security mission that had gone to assess the security situation in the Old Bagzai refugee camp in Kurram agency returned to Peshawar this weekend. It has recommended that the refugee agency resume its work in the area. The two feuding groups in Bagzai have signed a truce and the consensus is that it is safe to resume work. UNHCR will resume relocation of refugees to Old Bagzai tomorrow.

Both in NWFP and Balochistan, efforts to transfer homeless Afghans to new refugee camps continue. In the last three days, UNHCR has re-located more 3,000 refugees from Jalozai to the new Shalman and Kotkai in the tribal areas. Today, we moved 394 Uzbeks to the new Latifabad refugee camp, 70 kms southwest of the provincial capital.

Since mid-November, UNHCR has moved more than 118,000 Afghans to new refugee camps in NWFP and Balochistan.

People in western Afghanistan rejoiced the four-day down pour of rain last week, which was the first they had in three years. But by Saturday, many of the tents and mud huts in displaced people’s camps in the Herat area flooded or collapsed under the heavy rain. At least one death has been reported of a 5 year-old boy crushed under a collapsing roof in Shaidaye camp, 20 km east of Herat. Shaidaye is the second largest camp in western Afghanistan accommodating some 25,000 people who fled drought stricken provinces in central Afghanistan.

Aid agencies in Herat rushed on Saturday to provide additional shelter items for the displaced people in camps. UNHCR provided immediately to agencies in charge of camps (IOM and Danish Afghan Committee) 100 tents, 400 blankets, and 240 plastic sheeting and 40 shovels for Maslakh, Shaidaye, and Minaret 1&2 and Rawza Bagh, the five-tented sites in the Herat area.

There are an estimated 300,000 displaced people in six camps in and around Herat. The majority of the people are peasants from Ghor and Badghis provinces, who were forced to leave their homes due to severe drought. Although they were covered in mud from the sudden precipitation, the displaced farmers were generally excited. Many expressed wish to return home, now that the rain has fallen, if they could get transportation and assistance to recover livestock and planting seeds back home.

UNHCR has begun planning with other agencies to assist the eventual return of these drought-affected people in western Afghanistan, which requires an extensive support to rebuild their home communities.

UNHCR’s head of Afghan operations, Filippo Grandi, visited Herat this weekend and met with Mr. Ismail Khan, the governor of Herat. The governor agreed to UNHCR’s proposal to gradually shift assistance focus from camps to return areas, while ensuring assistance to new arrivals. The governor emphasized the importance of not only assisting refugees and displaced people to return, but also helping them stay once they’re back in their home villages.

UNHCR this year plans to focus on shelter and water assistance to returning refugees and displaced people in Afghanistan and to work closely with development agencies who could engage in larger projects to ensure re-integration of returnees.

As an on-going effort to support aid agencies already working to improve lives in provinces affected by drought, UNHCR provided this weekend 30 mattresses, 25 lanterns and 70 bars of soap to Medicins du Monde for hospitals in the Chaghcharan area in Ghor province.

** Wagdi Othman, Spokesperson for WFP

Good Afternoon. WFP today sent an international staff member to Kandahar for the first time since last September. WFP will resume full operations there as soon as it sets up a new office. WFP’s office and warehouse were looted and destroyed during the fighting in the city.

In northern Afghanistan, WFP field monitors are now in Zarah district, in the southern part of Balkh province. They have reported heavy snowfall over the weekend in the area.

It has also been extremely cold in the north, with temperatures below zero Celsius in some places. According to the WFP team on the ground, the hardest hit villages observed so far are Armakh, Abdul Gan and Baluj.

According to the three-member WFP team there, the road from Zarah to Armakh remains accessible. Therefore, WFP will move 380 metric tons of food to Armakh immediately using locally hired trucks. There are only five such trucks in town. WFP has also sent two trucks with 12 metric tons of high-energy biscuits from Mazar to Zarah district.

WFP staff will now assess the food security situation higher up in the mountains where there are more villages that have not been surveyed as yet. The team’s objective will be to determine whether these mountain villages are accessible.

WFP staff will also meet the local people to determine the number of pack animals available to transport supplies for further food distributions up into the mountains.

WFP now has three staff in the area: One is in Bonawash to monitor the situation in that village, receive the high-energy biscuits, and organize an immediate distribution.

Another WFP staff is further up in the Abdul Gan mountains doing more assessments and a third is helping with the food distributions in Zarah. WFP staff are all traveling by horse.

Tomorrow, WFP is sending another three staff as a reinforcement team. To further increase transport capacity, WFP will also rent 70-80 donkeys in Zarah to deliver the food.

An update on WFP citywide food distribution in Herat: It has rained in Herat for the last three days. Nonetheless, WFP's citywide food distribution has been averaging between 5,000 to 6,000 families per day and has proceeded so far without incident.

As of Sunday, WFP had distributed about 1,100 metric tons of food. The distribution is taking place in the city’s main stadium and has been very orderly. Beneficiaries enter the stadium from one gate and leave from the other, with a 50 kg bag of wheat -
enough to feed an entire family for one month.

WFP would like to thank its implementing partner, World Vision, for helping to arrange the registration of beneficiaries and the distribution.

Finally, the two-mile-long Salang tunnel, which links the northern and southern parts of Afghanistan, has reopened to traffic. It is an important development for Afghanistan but also for the World Food Programme.

The Salang Pass will give a greater flexibility to our food aid shipments and cut delivery time by three to four hours. A major highway from Kabul to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan, passes through the tunnel situated at 11,000 feet.

** Lori Hieber-Girardet, Spokesperson for WHO

The World Health Organization is working with local health authorities in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan to control an outbreak of the skin disease, Lieshmaniasis. A total of 738 cases, mostly in children under the age of 15, have been found in Kurram agency. These cases are amongst the local population and are in addition to 1500 cases in Afghan refugee camps. At least 72% of the affected are unable to access medical treatment.

Lieshmaniasis is a rare disease in Pakistan, but in November 2001 the provincial health department of NWFP notified who of a large number of cases of lieshmaniasis in several villages of Kurram agency (one of the afghan’s refugees hosting agencies).

To help NWFP province treat the cases and to prevent further spread of the disease, who has sponsored a rapid survey in Kurram agency. In addition to the new cases, the survey also found 289 cured cases. The disease is evenly distributed amongst both the genders, and on the average each case has contracted the disease within last 6 months.

Lieshmaniasis is a disease caused by the sand fly. When the sand fly bites the skin, the organism is transmitted to the blood. There are two types of the disease: urban and rural. The most common type in Pakistan is called urban or Anthroponotic Lieshmaniasis. The disease is transmitted from humans to humans. Rural or Zoonotic Lieshmaniasis comes from the interaction of man with animal.

The disease can manifest itself in two forms, Cutaneous and Systemic Lieshmaniasis:

Cutaneous Lieshmaniasis, can cause a lesion anywhere on the body but the most likely sites for these lesions are the exposed parts. The lesion rapidly gives rise to a harsh-looking large ulcer. The ulcer frequently eats the tissues and even when the ulcer
heals, it leads to permanent disfigurement. Systemic Lieshmaniasis, is more rare and invariably fatal if not treated promptly. It affects the internal body organs specially spleen and liver.

Lieshmaniasis can be completely cured, provided treatment is available. The situation is further complicated by the fact that very few local physicians can differentiate between Lieshmaniasis and other skin diseases that may mimic the skin lesion of Lieshmaniasis. The duration of the treatment varies from 8 to 90 days depending on the severity of the disease. Currently, the drug used in the treatment of Lieshmaniasis, Injection Glucantime, is not registered in Pakistan. The World Health Organization has requested its headquarters to provide emergency supplies of the drug for the local population and Afghans living outside camps. The UNHCR will import the drug under a one-time license provided by the Federal Ministry of Health for Afghan refugees in
camps.

Lieshmaniasis leaves permanent scarring which socially stigmatizes those who contract the disease. Unmarried women may be especially vulnerable to social exclusion.

To control the spread of Lieshmaniasis, preventive measures similar to those used against malaria should be used. Residual insecticide spray and bed nets are effective. Even more important, however, is improving environmental and sanitation living conditions.

It is feared that if proper remedial measures are not taken to contain the disease through collaborative efforts of the Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization, UNHCR and the provincial health department, the situation may lead to a catastrophe.