Afghan teacher recounts horrifying moment girls began to pass out from suspected poisoning

About 80 schoolgirls were affected by unidentified illness at the weekend

Afghan schoolgirls in class at an open-air primary school in Khogyani, Nangarhar. In another province, 80 girls fell ill during an assembly. AFP

A teacher has described the "shocking" moment he witnessed dozens of his female pupils falling ill from suspected poisoning.

About 80 girls and several teachers from primary schools in the northern Afghan province of Sar-e-Pul were reportedly poisoned in two incidents at the weekend, local officials confirmed to The National.

“On Saturday, around 8am, we asked all the students to gather in the schoolyard for an assembly, addressing some issues in the school, but before we could even finish our speeches, one of the students fainted and fell to the ground,” said Qurban Ali, a 35-year-old teacher at one of the schools.

“We put some water on her face, we thought it must be because of hunger since she hadn’t eaten. But just as we were taking her to her family, another girl collapsed."

He and his colleagues rushed the two girls to a nearby pharmacy to receive medicine. It is common in Afghanistan to receive medical attention for small ailments from pharmacists.

“But by the time we returned, more girls had collapsed and others were starting to show symptoms of dizziness, headaches, abdominal pain and vomiting ,” he said. “We realised they all seemed to have been poisoned. It was shocking.”

After dismissing those who were healthy, Mr Ali and his colleague took the affected pupils to hospital.

“The pharmacy was not equipped to handle so many patients,” he said. "We got some help from local doctors as well, who prescribed medicine to girls with milder symptoms."

While many have since been discharged, a few girls were kept in for observation. Their condition was said to be stable.

Neither the perpetrator nor the motive is known.

But women and girls’ freedom have come under increasing attack since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021. The majority of the women and girls in Afghanistan – above grade six – are banned from seeking education as high schools and universities remain closed to them. Employment and work opportunities have also been limited and the Taliban has imposed restrictions on women’s movement and presence in public and political spaces.

These were not the first such incidents of mass poisoning of schoolgirls in Afghanistan, with similar cases reported in Takhar, Herat and Balkh from as far back as 2010. Officials then had blamed Taliban militants.

However, subsequent investigations found no toxins in the girls who showed the symptoms. Later, the World Health Organisation said the poisonings were more likely a form of mass psychogenic illness.

While the source of the latest illnesses in the case of Sar-e-Pul schools remains unclear, Mr Ali suspects it may have been airborne.

“Our school is in a mountainous place, barely has any walls and the glass on the windows is broken, even the classrooms don’t have doors,” he said, urging government officials to invest in the school’s infrastructure. "About 200 students study in this way, exposed to the elements. It is possible the poison spread through the air."