Associated Press
November 22
he World Health Organization is sending medical supplies for 20,000 people to the Uzbek border with Afghanistan, a WHO official said Thursday.
The organization is also compiling a list of doctors in the border region who have worked in Afghanistan and who speak the local languages to work in mobile medical clinics once the border opens.
"They can participate in mobile medical teams in Afghanistan," said Vladimir Verbitsky, the head of the organization in Uzbekistan. "There are people who have this experience."
Most people in the border area are ethnic Tajiks or Uzbeks, the same groups that dominate northern Afghanistan.
The shipment of bandages, syringes, antibiotics and other essential medical supplies was to leave Tashkent on Thursday afternoon for the border city of Termez.
Termez, a poor city surrounded by cotton fields, was a key staging area for the Soviet army during its 1979-89 invasion of Afghanistan.
The WHO and other United Nations agencies are planning to use the city as part of a supply corridor for sending aid to Afghanistan.
The two truckloads of aid sent Thursday will "support and strengthen the health facilities in the border area," Verbitsky said.
He said that a larger aid shipment for 200,000 people is to be sent through Termez to Afghanistan the coming week.
The WHO is already sending medical supplies to Afghanistan through Pakistan but Verbitsky said the organization has been hesitant to send supplies from Uzbekistan due to fighting in the northern areas.
The World Food Program and UNICEF have been sending barges filled with food, blankets and winter clothing from Uzbekistan across the river border that separates the country from Afghanistan.