Elderly Brit couple held in Afghan jail are receiving medical treatment, Taliban claim after UN warned they could die after 'rapid deterioration' of their health
The update on the couple was given by the Taliban 's foreign minister after UN experts warned that Peter, 80, and Barbie Reynolds, 75, could die in custody.
They were arrested on February 1 in Bamiyan province along with an Afghan interpreter and their Chinese-American friend Faye Hall, who has since been released.
The pair, who have lived in Afghanistan for 18 years and were married in Kabul in 1970, ran a training organisation offering education programmes, including parenting skills courses.
At a press conference in Kabul, the minister said: 'All their human rights are being respected. They are being provided with medical care.
'They are in occasional contact with their families.' He added that 'efforts are underway to secure their release, but the process is not complete'.
The statement is similar to what was said in April when questions about their release arose.
In the UN special rapporteur, Alice Edwards' warning, she said their conditions could lead to 'rapid deterioration in mental and physical health.
She also cautioned that they face 'irreparable harm or even death'.
Although no charges have been levelled against the pair, they were held in a maximum security prison for several months.
They were also detained in underground cells without daylight. They were eventually moved to the Taliban's intelligence headquarters in Kabul.
The UN report went into details about Peter's worsening health - he suffers from tremors, eye infections, and needs heart medication after he suffered a stroke in 2023.
Barbie is also said to be 'weak and fragile'. She is also anaemic and has numbness in her feet.
Their children, who live in the UK and the US, have repeatedly pleaded for their parents' release, saying they fear they may 'die in custody'.
Although officials from the UK Foreign Office were allowed to perform a welfare visit, the promise of the couple's quick release by the Taliban government has not materialised.
Taliban sources have sometimes described their arrest as a 'misunderstanding' and blamed paperwork issues for their incarceration.
However, people in the know have told AFP that authorities had concerns that they owned 'non-Islamic' books.
In a rare phone call from prison, Peter, who has both Afghan and British citizenship, said his stay in prison was 'the nearest thing to hell'.
He claimed he was locked up alongside murderers and was limited to a single meagre daily meal of bread and chickpeas.
Peter also said he sleeps on a mattress on the floor, a situation which is reportedly still happening at his current location.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
11 hours ago
- The Independent
The world nearly beat polio. But fake records, an imperfect vaccine and missteps aided its comeback
For the past decade, Sughra Ayaz has traveled door to door in southeastern Pakistan, pleading with parents to allow children to be vaccinated against polio as part of a global campaign to wipe out the paralytic disease. She hears their demands and fears. Some are practical – families need basics like food and water more than vaccines. Others are simply unfounded – the oral doses are meant to sterilize their kids. Amid rampant misinformation and immense pressure for the campaign to succeed, Ayaz said, some managers have instructed workers to falsely mark children as immunized. And the vaccines, which must be kept cold, aren't always stored correctly, she added. 'In many places, our work is not done with honesty,' Ayaz said. The World Health Organization and partners embarked on their polio campaign in 1988 with the bold goal of eradication — a feat seen only once for human diseases, with smallpox in 1980. They came close several times, including in 2021, when just five cases of the natural virus were reported in Pakistanand Afghanistan. But since then, cases rebounded, hitting 99 last year, and officials have missed at least six self-imposed eradication deadlines. Afghanistan and Pakistan remain the only countries where transmission of polio — which is highly infectious, affects mainly children under 5, and can cause irreversible paralysis within hours -- has never been interrupted. The worldwide campaign has focused most of its attention and funding there for the past decade. But in its quest to eliminate the disease, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has been derailed by mismanagement and what insiders describe as blind allegiance to an outdated strategy and a problematic oral vaccine, according to workers, polio experts and internal materials obtained by The Associated Press. Officials have falsified vaccination records, selected unqualified people to dole out drops, failed to send out teams during mass campaigns, and dismissed concerns about the oral vaccinesparking outbreaks, according to documents shared with AP by staffers from GPEI – one of the largest and most expensive public health campaigns in history, with over $20 billion spent and nearly every country in the world involved. In Afghanistan and Pakistan – which share a border, harbor widespread mistrust of vaccines, and have weakened healthcare systems and infrastructure – local staffers like Ayaz have for years flagged problems to senior managers. But those issues, along with concerns by staffers and outside health officials, have long gone unaddressed, insiders say. Officials tout the successes – 3 billion children vaccinated, an estimated 20 million people who would have been paralyzed spared – while acknowledging challenges in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Remote villages are hard to reach, some cultural and religious authorities instruct against vaccination, and hundreds of polio workers and security staff have been killed because of their alignment with a Western-led initiative. Dr. Jamal Ahmed, WHO's polio director, defended progress in those two countries, citing workers' tailored response in resistant pockets. 'There's so many children being protected today because of the work that was done over the past 40 years,' he said. 'Let's not overdramatize the challenges, because that leads to children getting paralyzed.' Ahmed said he believes authorities will end the spread of polio in the next 12 to 18 months. Its latest goal for eradication is 2029. The campaign says about 45 million children in Pakistan and 11 million in Afghanistan must be vaccinated this year. Children typically need four doses of two drops each to be considered fully immunized. Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta, who has served on advisory groups for WHO, the Gates Foundation and others, said campaign officials should listen to the criticism of its tactics. 'Continuing blindly with the same strategies that we have relied on since eradication began is unlikely to lead to a different result,' he said. Documents show yearslong problems on polio vaccination teams Internal WHO reports reviewing vaccination drives in Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past decade – given to AP by current and former staffers – show that as early as 2017, local workers were alerting significant problems to senior managers. The documents flagged multiple cases of falsified vaccination records, health workers being replaced by untrained relatives and workers improperly administering vaccines. On numerous occasions, WHO officials noted, 'vaccinators did not know about vaccine management,' citing failure to keep doses properly cold. They also found sloppy or falsified reporting, with workers noting 'more used vaccine vials than were actually supplied.' According to an August 2017 report from Kandahar, Afghanistan, local government authorities and others interfered in choosing vaccinators, 'resulting in the selection of underage and illiterate volunteers.' Vaccination teams worked 'in a hurried manner,' reports said, with 'no plan for monitoring or supervision.' A team in Nawzad, Afghanistan, covered just half of the intended area in 2017, with 250 households missed entirely. Village elders said no one visited for at least two years. Vaccine workers and health officials in Afghanistan and Pakistan confirmed the issues in the documents and told AP it's hard for campaign leadership to grasp the difficulties in the field. Door-to-door efforts are stymied by cultural barriers, unfounded stories about vaccines, and the region's poverty and transience. 'Most of the time when we go to vaccinate and knock on the door, the head of the house or the man is not at home,' said one worker, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the press. 'Many people find it offensive that a stranger knocks on the door and talks to a woman.' Some workers find families have moved. Occasionally, they say, the encounter abuse. 'We have shared these problems with our senior officials,' the worker told AP. 'They know about it.' In an email response to AP's questions about officials' knowledge of the issues, WHO polio director Ahmed noted 'operational challenges' in Afghanistan and Pakistan and said the program has 'robust monitoring and evaluation processes.' Worker Ayaz described 'fake finger marking' — placing the ink used to show a child is vaccinated on their pinky even when no vaccine has been given. 'There is so much pressure,' Ayaz said. Critics point to continued use of the oral polio vaccine Before the first polio vaccine was developed in 1955, the disease — spread mostly from person to person, through contaminated water and via fecal particles — was among the world's most feared, paralyzing hundreds of thousands of children annually. People avoided crowded places during epidemics, and hospital wards filled with children encased in iron lungs after the virus immobilized their breathing muscles. Polio is mainly spread when people are exposed to water infected with the virus. In countries with poor sanitation, children often become infected when they come into contact with contaminated waste. WHO says that as long as a single child remains infected, kids everywhere are at risk. Eradication demands near-perfection – zero polio cases and immunizing more than 95% of children. But public health leaders and former WHO staffers say campaign efforts are far from perfect, and many question the oral vaccine. The oral vaccine – proven to be safe and effective — has been given to more than 3 billion children. But there are some extremely rare side effects: Scientists estimate that for every 2.7 million first doses given, one child will be paralyzed by the live polio virus in the vaccine. In even rarer instances, the live virus can mutate into a form capable of starting new outbreaks among unimmunized people where vaccination rates are low. Worldwide, several hundred vaccine-derived cases have been reported annually since at least 2021, with at least 98 this year. Most public health experts agree the oral vaccine should be pulled as soon as possible. But they acknowledge there simply isn't enough injectable vaccine — which uses no live virus and doesn't come with the risks of the oral vaccine — to wipe out polio alone. The injectable vaccine also is more expensive and requires more training to administer. More than two dozen current and former senior polio officials told AP the agencies involved haven't been willing to even consider revising their strategy to account for some of the campaign's problems. Dr. Tom Frieden, a former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who sits on an independent board reviewing polio eradication, said it would be impossible to eliminate polio without the oral vaccine. But he's urged authorities to find ways to adapt, such as adopting new methods to identify polio cases more quickly. Since 2011, he and colleagues have issued regular reports about overall program failures. 'There's no management,' he said, citing a lack of accountability. Last year, former WHO scientist Dr. T. Jacob John twice emailed WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus calling for a 'major course correction.' John shared the emails with AP and said he's received no response. 'WHO is persisting with polio control and creating polio with one hand and attempting to control it by the other,' John wrote. In his response to AP, WHO polio director Ahmed said the oral vaccine is a 'core pillar' of eradication strategy and that 'almost every country that is polio-free today used (it) to achieve that milestone.' 'We need to step back and really care for the people,' he said. 'The only way we can do that in large parts of the world is with oral polio vaccine.' Ahmed also pointed to the success WHO and partners had eliminating polio from India, once considered a nearly impossible task. In the four years before polio was wiped out there, health workers delivered about 1 billion doses of the oral vaccine to more than 170 million children. Today, nearly all of the world's polio cases -- mostly in Africa and the Middle East -- are mutated viruses from the oral vaccine, except for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Scott Barrett, a Columbia University professor, called for an inquiry into how things went so wrong – particularly with a failed effort in 2016, when authorities removed a strain from the oral vaccine. They miscalculated, leading to outbreaks in more than 40 countries that paralyzed more than 3,000 children, according to an expert report commissioned by WHO. Last year, a mutated virus traced to that effort paralyzed a baby in Gaza. 'Unless you have a public inquiry where all the evidence comes out and WHO makes serious changes, it will be very hard to trust them,' he said. Mistrust of the polio eradication effort persists With an annual budget of about $1 billion, the polio initiative is among the most expensive in all of public health. This year, the U.S. withdrew from WHO, and President Donald Trump has cut foreign aid. WHO officials have privately admitted that sustaining funding would be difficult without success. Some say the money would be better spent on other health needs. 'We have spent more than $1 billion (in external polio funding) in the last five years in Pakistan alone, and it didn't buy us any progress,' said Roland Sutter, who formerly led polio research at WHO. 'If this was a private company, we would demand results.' Villagers, too, have protested the cost, staging hundreds of boycotts of immunization campaigns since 2023. Instead of polio vaccines, they ask for medicine, food and electricity. In Karachi, locals told AP they didn't understand the government's fixation on polio and complained of other issues — dirty water, heroin addiction. Workers are accompanied by armed guards; Pakistani authorities say more than 200 workers and police assigned to protect them have been killed since the 1990s, mostly by militants. The campaign also is up against a wave of misinformation, including that the vaccine is made from pig urine or will make children reach puberty early. Some blame an anti-vaccine sentiment growing in the U.S. and other countries that have largely funded eradication efforts and say it's reaching even remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. In suburban southwest Pakistan, Saleem Khan, 58, said two grandchildren under 5 were vaccinated over his family's objections. 'It results in disability,' said Khan, without citing evidence for his belief. 'They are vaccinated because officials reported our refusal to authorities and the police.' Svea Closser, professor of international health at Johns Hopkins University, said Pakistan and Afghanistan were less resistant to immunization decades ago. Now, people are angry about the focus on polio and lack of help for diseases like measles or tuberculosis, she said, spurring conspiracy theories. 'Polio eradication has created a monster,' Closser said. It doesn't help, she added, that in this region, public trust in vaccine campaigns was undermined when the CIA organized a fake hepatitis drive in 2011 in an attempt to get DNA and confirm the presence of Osama bin Laden or his family. Workers see that continued mistrust every day. In a mountainous region of southeastern Afghanistan where most people survive by growing wheat and raising cows and chickens, a mother of five said she'd prefer that her children be vaccinated against polio, but her husband and other male relatives have instructed their families to reject it. They believe the false rumors that it will compromise their children's fertility. 'If I allow it,' the woman said, declining to be named over fears of family retribution, 'I will be beaten and thrown out.' Cheng reported from London. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
The Independent
11 hours ago
- The Independent
Takeaways from AP's report on problems in the worldwide campaign to eradicate polio
For nearly four decades, the World Health Organization and partners have been trying to rid the world of polio, a paralytic disease that has existed since prehistoric times. While cases have dropped more than 99%, polio remains entrenched in parts of Afghanistanand Pakistan. In its quest to eliminate the virus, WHO and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative have been derailed by mismanagement and what insiders describe as blind allegiance to an outdated strategy and a problematic oral vaccine, according to workers, polio experts and internal materials obtained by the Associated Press. Officials tout the successes – 3 billion children vaccinated, an estimated 20 million people who would have been paralyzed spared – while acknowledging challenges in Pakistan and Afghanistan. WHO polio director Dr. Jamal Ahmed defended progress in those two countries, citing workers' tailored response in resistant pockets. Here are some takeaways from AP's report on what's happened in one of the most expensive efforts in all of public health. Documents show major problems on polio vaccination teams Internal WHO reports reviewing polio immunization in Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past decade — given to AP by current and former staffers — show that as early as 2017, local workers were alerting problems to senior managers. The documents flagged multiple cases of falsified vaccination records, health workers being replaced by untrained relatives and workers improperly administering vaccines. On numerous occasions, WHO officials noted, 'vaccinators did not know about vaccine management,' citing failure to keep doses properly cold. They also found sloppy or falsified reporting, with workers noting 'more used vaccine vials than were actually supplied.' According to an August 2017 report from Kandahar, Afghanistan, vaccination teams worked 'in a hurried manner,' reports said, with 'no plan for monitoring." A team in Nawzad, Afghanistan, covered just half of the intended area in 2017, with 250 households missed entirely. Village elders said no one visited for at least two years. Polio workers say problems have gone unaddressed Health officials in Afghanistan and Pakistan told AP their efforts to vaccinate children are often stymied by cultural barriers, misinformation about the vaccines, and poverty. Sughra Ayaz has traveled door to door in southeastern Pakistan for the past decade, pleading for children to be immunized. Some families demand basics such as food and water instead of vaccines. Others, without citing proof for their beliefs, repeat false rumors and say they think the oral vaccine doses are meant to sterilize their kids. Ayaz said that given the immense pressure for the campaign to succeed, some managers have instructed workers to falsely mark children as immunized 'In many places, our work is not done with honesty,' she said. Some scientists blame the oral vaccine Polio eradication demands perfection — zero polio cases and immunizing more than 95% of children. But some scientists and former WHO staffers say the campaign's efforts are far from perfect, blaming in particular the oral vaccine. It's safe and effective, but in very rare instances, the live virus in the oral vaccine can paralyze a child. In even rarer cases, the virus can mutate into a form capable of starting outbreaks among unimmunized people where vaccination rates are low. Except for Afghanistan and Pakistan, most polio cases worldwide are linked to the vaccine; several hundred cases have been reported annually since 2021, with at least 98 this year. Most public health experts agree the oral vaccine should be pulled as soon as possible. But they acknowledge there isn't enough injectable vaccine — which uses no live virus and doesn't come with the risks of the oral vaccine — to eliminate polio alone. The injectable vaccine is more expensive and requires more training to administer. More than two dozen current and former senior polio officials told AP the agencies involved haven't been willing to even consider revising their strategy to account for campaign problems. Last year, former WHO scientist Dr. T. Jacob John twice emailed WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus calling for a 'major course correction.' John wrote that 'WHO is persisting with polio control and creating polio with one hand and attempting to control it by the other.' Ahmed told AP the oral vaccine is a 'core pillar' of eradication strategy and that 'almost every country that is polio-free today used (it) to achieve that milestone.' Critics say there's no accountability Dr. Tom Frieden, who sits on an independent board reviewing polio eradication, said he and colleagues have urged WHO and partners to adapt to obstacles in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since 2011, the board has issued regular reports about program failures, but had little impact. 'There's no management,' he said. With an annual budget of about $1 billion, polio eradication is among the most expensive initiatives in public health. WHO officials have privately admitted that sustaining funding will be difficult without signs of progress. Roland Sutter, who previously headed polio research at WHO, said donors had spent more than $1 billion in Pakistan trying to get rid of polio in the last five years — and made little progress. 'If this was a private company, we would demand results," he said. Ahmed pointed to the program's many successes. "Let's not overdramatize the challenges, because that leads to children getting paralyzed,' he said. Mistrust of the vaccine persists Vaccine workers and health officials say it's hard for campaign leadership to grasp the difficulties in the field. Door-to-door efforts are stymied by cultural barriers, unfounded stories about vaccines, and the region's poverty and transience. The campaign is up against a wave of misinformation, including that the vaccine is made from pig urine or will make children reach puberty early. Some blame an anti-vaccine sentiment growing in the U.S. and other countries that have largely funded eradication efforts. In a mountainous region of southeastern Afghanistan where most people survive by growing wheat and raising cows and chickens, many are wary of the Western-led initiative. A mother of five said she'd prefer that her children be vaccinated against polio, but her husband and other male relatives have instructed their families to reject it, fearing it will compromise their children's fertility. 'If I allow it,' the woman said, declining to be named over fears of family retribution, 'I will be beaten and thrown out.' Cheng reported from London. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
Letby babies could have survived with better medical care, claims expert
Babies who died at Lucy Letby 's hospital may have survived with better medical care, a leading child expert has said. In a new ITV documentary about Letby's case, Prof Neena Modi, of Imperial College, said she had examined medical notes and concluded that critically ill babies had not been monitored or treated appropriately. Letby, 35, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders for killing seven babies and attempting to murder seven others at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016. But Prof Modi, a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said the babies should never have been admitted to the ill-equipped and understaffed neonatal unit. 'On reading through the detailed medical notes, what was harrowing was seeing a story unfold where possibly things could have been recognised earlier and interventions could have been put in place, and perhaps for some of the babies, the outcomes might not have been what they were,' she said. 'This was deeply distressing. This was a neonatal unit that was being required to look after babies who should not have been cared for there. 'The babies that we're referring to were all extremely vulnerable. Some of them were demonstrably and recognisably on a knife edge. 'Others could have been recognised to have been on a knife edge, but they were not monitored appropriately, and they were not treated appropriately. 'Problems went unrecognised until the point at which a baby deteriorated very abruptly. So the babies might not have died had their difficulties been addressed earlier.' Prof Modi is part of a panel of world-leading experts who have challenged the verdicts and who have compiled a report that has been presented to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which looks into potential miscarriages of justice. The CCRC is expected to report back before Christmas. The documentary also heard that test results which the prosecution relied on to prove that several of the babies had been poisoned with insulin were not fit for purpose. Prof Matthew Johll, a forensic chemist from Illinois Valley Community College, said that an immunoassay test should not have been used to convict Letby without follow up forensic testing to rule out a false positive. 'You would not strip a gold medal from an international athlete on an immunoassay,' he said. 'It's not good enough for drug testing for pilots or anyone who has mandatory drug testing. So how can it be good enough to put someone in prison?' Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? is currently available on ITVX. The show's producers said: 'After two trials, nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty of killing seven newborn babies and attempting to kill seven others in one of the most shocking murder cases in British history. 'Described as a cold-blooded, calculating killer, Letby was said to have used her trusted role to cause catastrophic harm to the most vulnerable newborn babies. 'So why are a growing number of expert voices now questioning the evidence used to convict her? This programme explores the views of a team of international scientists who say the prosecution case simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny.' Letby could also face further charges. In July, Cheshire Constabulary passed a new file to the Crown Prosecution Service relating to new baby deaths and non-fatal collapses at the Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women's Hospital between 2012 and 2016. The CPS confirmed that it had received the file and said it would 'carefully consider the evidence to determine whether any criminal charges should be brought'. Cheshire Constabulary is also investigating three former managers from the Countess of Chester over allegations of gross negligence manslaughter and corporate manslaughter.
