A UN agency warned of a cholera outbreak in eastern Afghanistan, thousands affected by a deadly earthquake in eastern Afghanistan need clean water and food, and are at risk of disease, an Afghan health ministry official said on Sunday.
The people are extremely needy for food and clean water, according to Afghanistan's health ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman, who said officials had managed medicines for now but handling those who had lost their homes would be a challenge.
He said that the international community, humanitarian organizations, to help us for food and medicine, the survivors might catch diseases because they don't have adequate houses and shelters for living.
The disaster is a major test for Afghanistan's hardline Taliban rulers who have been shunned by many foreign governments because of concerns about human rights since they took control of the country last year.
Helping thousands of Afghans is a challenge for countries that have imposed sanctions on Afghan government bodies and banks, cutting off direct assistance, which has resulted in a humanitarian crisis even before the earthquake. Afghans are facing crises on all fronts after quake kills 1,000 The United Nations and several other countries, with more due to arrive over the coming days. Afghanistan's Taliban administration called for a rolling back of sanctions and lifting of a freeze on central bank assets stashed in Western financial institutions. More hospitals in Kabul have opened their wards to treat victims of war but a majority of people are still in the areas destroyed by the earthquake. Our houses were destroyed, we have no tent. There are lots of children with us. We have nothing. "Everything is under rubble," Hazrat Ali, 18, said in Wor Kali, a village of the hardest-hit Barmal district. My heart is broken because I lost my brothers. We are just two. I loved them a lot, he said.