India’s Ministry of External Affairs said on Tuesday (April 14) that the country has delivered 13 tonnes of tuberculosis (TB) vaccines to the Taliban-run Ministry of Public Health.
Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, citing the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said the shipment is intended to strengthen Afghanistan’s child immunization program.
India has sent several humanitarian aid shipments to Afghanistan in recent months amid rising tensions between the Taliban and Pakistan. Most of the assistance has been medical, as the halt in trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan has caused major disruptions in the country’s healthcare system.
Taliban Minister of Public Health Noor Jalal Jalali previously said that up to 70 percent of Afghanistan’s medicines used to come from Pakistan.
However, the Taliban has now banned the import of medicines from Pakistan and shifted to alternative markets. Iran, one of those suppliers, has recently been affected by conflict involving the United States and Israel.
