Disfiguring skin disease plagues Afghanistan

By Robert Birsel

KABUL (Reuters) - The 10-year-old Afghan girl has big eyes, a shy smile and a dark lesion speckled with blood on her right cheek.

The girl has leishmaniasis, a disease caused by a parasite transmitted by a tiny sandfly that can lead to severe scarring, often on the face.

The girl, Sahima, wearing a purple tunic and trousers and pale blue shoes, answers "no" softly when asked if the sore hurts.

But her father is worried about the lesion, the size of a big coin.

"Of course, this doesn't look good," the father, Najibullah, said at a leishmaniasis clinic crowded with children with sores in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Najibullah said he first noticed a mark on his daughter's face two months ago. "It was a very small dot but it grew and grew. If it grows any more it will cover her whole face."

Leishmaniasis isn't a priority for the government and its aid donors, grappling with shocking rates of infant mortality, tuberculosis, malaria and trauma.

The most common form of the disease is not fatal but it causes untold misery. Victims with scarring on their faces are stigmatised: children are excluded at school and girls often won't be able to find husbands.