KABUL, Afghanistan — As many as 10 people have died in western Afghanistan from a rare liver disease thought to be caused by contaminated wheat, officials said Saturday.
At least 161 people were also hospitalized with Gulran disease in Herat province on the Iranian border, said Peter Graaff, resident representative of the U.N. World Health Organization.
A toxic weed called charmak grows in the area and contains chemicals that can cause Gulran disease, according to the WHO.
Graaff said the disease is not new but rare and has killed as many as 10 people in recent weeks.
Abdul Hakim Tamana, the director of the Herat public health department, said Gulran disease “has spread all over” the affected district.
It was unclear exactly how the people became ill. The WHO was sending an epidemiologist to Afghanistan within days to investigate whether wheat or other foods were contaminated and whether people might be eating the weed accidentally or deliberately for flavor, Graaff said.
WHO and Afghan government authorities think that local wheat was tainted with charmak and have taken measures to distribute fresh wheat supplies.
Tests have not been done to check for contamination, and laboratories in the capital, Kabul, were unable to detect the cause of the illness.
“Maybe the flour they have is contaminated,” Graaff said. “Is it the wheat that is contaminated, or do people eat it deliberately to add to the taste? Or other food products might be contaminated.”
The Afghan Red Crescent Society received $14,000 to buy new wheat to replace suspect supplies in the district as a precautionary measure, said Graziella Leite Piccolo, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kabul.
Tamana said that Gulran disease has affected people in the area for the past 40 years and that several people died from it in 1999 and 2001.
