Blood tests have confirmed that a series of cases of mass sickness at girls’ schools across Afghanistan over the past two years were caused by a powerful poison gas, an official said on Tuesday.
The admission came in an interview, as a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health was answering questions about two new episodes in the past week. The spokesman, Kargar Norughli, said his ministry and the WHO had been testing the blood of victims in 10 mass sickenings and had confirmed the presence of toxic but not fatal levels of organophosphates. Those compounds are widely used in insecticides and herbicides, and they are also the active ingredients of compounds developed in the past as chemical weapons, including sarin and VX gas.
Norughli did not explain why the confirmations had not been announced earlier. However, he emphasized that how the gas was delivered — and even whether the poisonings were deliberate — remained a mystery. There have been no fatalities, and no one has claimed responsibility for the episodes.
PHOTO: AFP
Many local officials had dismissed the cases as episodes of hysteria provoked by acid and arson attacks on schoolgirls by Taliban fighters and others who objected to their education, but the cases have been reported only in girls’ schools, or in mixed schools during hours set aside only for girls.
The blood samples taken in the past week from victims in the two new cases — from 119 girls and four teachers at two schools in Kabul — are still being analyzed, Norughli said, but their symptoms were similar to those in the 10 cases where the poisonings were confirmed.
A spokeswoman for the WHO in Afghanistan, Aanchal Khurana, said that she could not immediately confirm the results of the earlier tests, but added that the testing had been done by the Afghan government with the UN agency’s support.
“WHO helps them investigate the cases, and we give them technical support,” she said.
At 9:30am on Saturday, students at the Zabihullah Esmati High School in the Kart-e-Naw area of Kabul alerted their deputy principal, Tela Mohammed Ameri, to a strong, sweet smell in one of the classrooms.
Soon the odor turned foul, and several girls began complaining of headaches and sore throats, both in that classroom and an adjacent one. Within minutes, they began fainting. Ameri ordered the school evacuated. Many of the girls fainted as they tried to flee — in the hallways, in the courtyard outside and even half an hour later as they walked home. A few reported that they passed out at home hours later.
There was no visible sign of any poison in the classrooms.
In all, 45 students and four teachers were on Saturday taken to the local hospital, the Rahman Mina Clinic, according to the clinic’s deputy director, Rahmatullah Hafizi. Three days earlier, he said, the clinic received 74 students from another girls’ school, the Totya High School, in the same part of the city, with the same problems.
With varying degrees of severity, the victims displayed classic symptoms of organophosphate poisoning, as described by Hafizi and other doctors who treated them. Known by the diagnostic mnemonic of SLUDGE, the symptoms include salivation, lacrimation (tearing), urinary distress, diarrhea, gastrointestinal upset and emesis (vomiting).
In addition, Hafizi said, many of the girls were severely short of breath, and the sickest had cyanosis, where skin color turns bluish from oxygen deprivation.
Most were treated with oxygen therapy at the clinic and sent home after a few hours; those who were unconscious for long periods or had cyanosis were sent to a larger hospital, the Ibn Sina Hospital, Hafizi said.
The gassings mostly occurred in areas of the country with large Pashtun populations, where opposition to girls’ education has been stronger than elsewhere. The Kart-e-Naw part of the city, where the schools in the newest cases are, is a heavily Pashtun quarter.
Attacks on schools in Afghanistan, particularly girls’ schools, have been rife in recent years. A spokesman for the Ministry of Education, Gul Agha Ahmadi, said 60 schools had been burned down or destroyed so far this year. Cases where acid is thrown on female students are frequent in the south and occasionally even in Kabul.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, reached by telephone, said the insurgents’ opposition to some girls’ education did not mean they would resort to gas attacks.
“We have not and will never take such action against innocent girls,” he said.
At the Esmati High School there was little doubt who was to blame.
“There are some people who are always intimidating girls from going to school,” said Abida Sadiri, a religion teacher, who also was among those sickened.
Many students stayed home from school in the days after the attack, but most returned, including 15-year-old Waheeda Amiri, who, with her four sisters, was among those sickened on Saturday.
“School builds our future,” she said. “I was worried my family wouldn’t let us come back, but my father said we should. Whatever they do to us, we are going to keep coming.”
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