HERAT CITY (PAN): Fifteen hundred patients from northwestern Badghis province are being sent to neighbouring Turkmenistan for treatment over next nine months, officials said on Wednesday.
Governor Sharfuddin Majidi told Pajhwok Afghan News the patients were being sent under an agreement with Turkmenistan, adding 500 Afghan patients who had been sent to Turkmenistan’s south-eastern Mary province returned on Tuesday.
He said patients would be sent on completion of all legal process.
A doctor at the Mary Hospital, where Afghans are being treated, Bastim Orazov, told Pajhwok Afghan News they treated Afghans on humanitarian ground and would continue to do so in the future as well.
A Bala Marghab district resident, Abdul Jalil, who was among patients returned from Turkmenistan a day earlier, said Turkmen doctors were very sincere in their treatment.
“I had a stomach problem that local doctors failed to treat. Now I am ok,” he said.
Civil society activist Abdullah Durrani said Turkmenistan had modern medical facilities compared to Afghanistan. He called for the process of sending Afghan patients to the nieghbouring country to be continued.
