A cyclist rides past the Subhan Clinic in Kabul, which the Afghan health ministry shut for selling its own anti-coronavirus medicine without a valid license
Photographer: Jim Huylebroek/BloombergOpium Demand Jumps as Desperate Afghan Villagers Seek Covid Cure
- As virus spreads in the nation, locals seek traditional remedy
- Demand has helped push up farm-gate prices by more than 60%
In a remote Afghan village, Lal Mohammad says he is beating the coronavirus by consuming opium after the drug helped his relatives recover.
The 48-year-old taxi driver bought 250 grams of the drug four weeks ago from a Taliban-backed farmer who grows opium poppies once a year in Qarchi Gak, an arid, war-beaten village in the north of the country. Mohammad puts a pea-sized lump of the sticky, dark brown substance under his tongue twice a day and lets it melt.
“It’s hard to believe that I survived the coronavirus after I started using the opium,” Mohammad said on July 1 in his mud-walled house about 300 miles north of the capital Kabul. “It took away the severe pain from my body and my fever has also gone.”