Dr Yousef was the first in his family to get tested for Covid-19 – and the first to die.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
“He came home and said, ‘I’m not feeling well and I think I have the virus’,” Behtarin Paktiawal tells me, recalling what was a fateful day for his family. They would end up losing three loved ones to the virus, which is stalking Afghanistan at a speed and scale still perilously uncertain.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
For an embattled nation already fighting on multiple fronts, the world’s health crisis is yet another disaster threatening to overwhelm a fragile health system, and exhaust people weary of endless war.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
And with each week that passes, both violence and the virus spread.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Paktiawal’s brother, Dr Yousef Khan Ariubi, had tested positive for Covid-19 – but he wasn’t sent his test results. He was expecting them from the Afghan-Japan government hospital in Kabul, which is playing a central role in Afghanistan’s fight against the coronavirus.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
“I said to them, ‘why didn’t you call us?'” Paktiawal recounts as he cradles a small photo album with a photograph of his brother tucked in its plastic cover. “They told me they made a mistake.” Then the hospital tested the entire family.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
A month and half on, he says their results are still missing – but as they wait, his brother Fazel and sister Gul Khumar have also died.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dr Yousef was the first in his family to get tested for Covid-19 – and the first to die. “He came home and said, ‘I’m not feeling well and I think I have the virus’,” Behtarin Paktiawal tells me, recalling what was a fateful day for his family. They would end up losing three loved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabawoon.af\/fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabawoon.af\/fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabawoon.af\/fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabawoon.af\/fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabawoon.af\/fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sabawoon.af\/fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabawoon.af\/fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabawoon.af\/fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabawoon.af\/fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabawoon.af\/fm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}