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Even as aid workers struggle to provide enough food to countless Afghans displaced by war,
drought and Taliban repression, health officials say they are increasingly concerned that
both Afghanistan and Pakistan face another threat: a potential epidemic of
tuberculosis.
Pakistan and Afghanistan already have high incidence of tuberculosis, with more than 350,000 people developing the disease each year. Now, the crowded refugee camps threaten to become a mass incubator of the disease, creating a health crisis that could last for years after the fighting stops, World Health Organization officials said last week. "You put people in compressed spaces in a time of great stress -- that kind of situation we fear can lead to a major epidemic," said Mario Raviglione, who supervises tuberculosis programs for the health organization. "We're going to be dealing with this for a long time unless we do something about it now."
The health organization, the World Bank, several United Nations agencies and more than a dozen nations seeking to fight tuberculosis outbreaks plan to meet in Washington this week to discuss a strategy to fight the disease around the world. The crisis in Afghanistan will be high on the agenda, Mr. Raviglione said.
Twenty-two nations, including the world's two most populous, China and India, are considered to have serious problems with tuberculosis, even though the disease is both preventable and highly treatable with proper medical care.
Worldwide, cases have soared in recent years, with some 8.7 million people developing the disease last year. About two million people died of tuberculosis last year, almost all of them in poor nations, where most people do not receive vaccinations and the sanitary conditions are not good.
A grouping of some 120 public and private groups devoted to fighting the disease has raised about half of the $9.3 billion that its members say would be required to wipe out the disease over the next five years. Aside from official sources, some private charities and individuals, including George Soros, the financier, have made tuberculosis a major focus of their philanthropy.
The problem had become so acute in Afghanistan that the health organization raised money to treat victims there despite the difficulty of administering aid under the Taliban, Mr. Raviglione said. The program had been expected to begin last month, but was disrupted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and the allied response.
That effort is now focused on refugee camps, but health officials said the money they had raised -- just over $1 million -- is proving inadequate.
"To say that are resources are short in this area is a great understatement," Mr. Raviglione said.
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