Afghans are using opium to treat colds and other basic illnesses amid severe medicine shortages in the country, which is currently in the grip of a major humanitarian crisis.

Dozens of top public hospitals and local healthcare facilities have been shut across Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in recent months due to a lack of funding, leaving patients to fend for themselves.

The crisis has been exacerbated by an exodus of healthcare professionals, large numbers of whom have fled the country in the wake of the Taliban retaking power in August 2021.

In some cases people have turned to opium, which has historically been widely cultivated in Afghanistan, as a remedy for common ailments including colds, stomach aches and headaches.

“My nephew had a severe headache and cold. There were no medicines available so I gave him opium to alleviate his pain and induce sleep,” Zainul Abideen, a resident of north eastern Kunar province, told the Telegraph.

Others said unaffordably high treatment costs had forced them to use the drug instead.

“Hospitals don’t have medicines and [there are] no doctors to treat us. Buying medicine in private is expensive,” said Shir Ahmad, a resident of southern Helmand province, the former heartland of opium production.

“Opium is readily available and gives relief from the pain for many hours,” Ahmad said.

Afghanistan was formerly the world’s top supplier of opium, prior to the Taliban administration banning poppy farming in 2022.

Opium cultivation has fallen to just 10,800 hectares (26,700 acres) nationwide so far this year, from 233,000 hectares in 2022, slashing supply by 95 per cent, but the drug remains readily available.

Musa Umarkhil, who suffers from haemophilia, told the Telegraph he had used the highly addictive substance in order to relieve his pain because of a critical shortage of Factor-VIII, a blood-clotting medication.

“I have been writhing in pain for the past three days due to internal bleeding in my shoulder. There are no factors available in Kabul and painkillers are expensive,” said Mr Umarkhil, who lives in the Afghan capital.

“I took opium last night to sleep and get rid of the pain.”

‘Critical shortage of medicines’

Syed Neyamatullah Ahmadi, a psychiatrist based in Kabul, said Mr Umarkhil’s situation was increasingly common across many parts of Afghanistan amid a scarcity of essential drugs.

“Patients are forced to use opium to get relief from the pain because both private and public health sectors are facing a critical shortage of medicines,” Mr Ahmadi said.

“The situation is adding to the growing number of drug addicts who too are suffering due to lack of adequate healthcare.”

Experts have warned that the healthcare system in Afghanistan, already home to around four million drug users, equivalent to about 10 per cent of its total population, is on the brink of collapse.

Propped up by foreign aid for nearly two decades, the system has been in freefall since the Taliban retook power.

International donors immediately cut financial funding in response to the group’s return and imposed sanctions on the new administration.

The United Nations estimates that more than 28 million Afghans, equivalent to more than two-thirds of the country’s population, are currently in need of humanitarian assistance.