The Overseas Situation Report Friday 24 September 2021
by Mike Evans
“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a long time. But it ain’t going away.”
– Author unknown
Throughout the pandemic there has been a lot written about the accuracy of figures given by countries, institutions and individuals from all across the world. Social Media has been accused of allowing fake news to infiltrate the real news and this in itself has led to a massive increase in people’s perception of what is real and what is not.
There are a number of websites which have been providing information regarding the statistics for the pandemic and on the whole these have been as accurate as they can be given the figures they are provided. They can only provide accurate information if the statistics they are supplied with are accurate and it is obvious as time moves on that not every country is being truthful with the situation in their respective countries. In this report I am relaying to you one such story which illustrates this issue perfectly.
Turkmenistan is a country in Central Asia bordered by the Caspian Sea and largely covered by the Karakum Desert. It’s known for archaeological ruins including those at Nisa and Merv, major stops along the ancient trade route the Silk Road. Ashgabat, the capital, was rebuilt in Soviet style in the mid-20th century and is filled with grand monuments honoring former president Saparmurat Niyazov. Turkmenistan is one of only a handful of countries, including North Korea, which says it has no coronavirus cases. But reports suggest it is experiencing its third and possibly strongest wave of Covid-19.
Here is one story that describes this issue perfectly and tragically for many in the country.
Sayahat Kurbanov was suffocating. He gasped for air as if he were running a marathon, the pain in his chest unbearable. He had all the symptoms of coronavirus. The problem was he was in Turkmenistan, where patients like him officially do not exist.When he called an ambulance last month the doctor told him he had pneumonia and should go to hospital urgently. Mr Kurbanov (not his real name) knew that the country’s doctors referred to Covid cases as pneumonia. On the way to the hospital Mr Kurbanov managed to call the clinic where he had done a Covid test a few days earlier. “It is positive,” he heard a quiet voice say. “What is positive?” he shouted, “is it Covid?” “Yes,” came the answer. Only later did he discover they never give you a piece of paper if you test positive in Turkmenistan.
The first hospital they went to refused to take him because it was full. “I nearly died on the way,” Mr Kurbanov said. “The lack of air… the virus progressed so quickly. I started hitting the window and shouted ‘Please stop, I can’t breathe’. They gave me oxygen but it didn’t help much.”
The next hospital also refused to admit him, this time because it was banned from taking in patients who were not registered in the capital, Ashgabat. “I started panicking. I asked the doctor, ‘What am I supposed to do? Die here?'” He called a doctor he knew and begged for help. After numerous phone calls and heated conversations he was eventually admitted. His condition did not change for five days.”I couldn’t inhale – it was as if everything inside me was glued. I had panic attacks since I couldn’t breathe. It was as if I had dived underwater and couldn’t surface.”He shouted for nurses to give him something to alleviate the pain. Getting into a hospital is not always enough to receive treatment in Turkmenistan, Mr Kurbanov says. Doctors routinely ignore patients and nurses don’t check on them unless someone high up calls the right people.
The hospital was also badly understaffed with a couple of nurses looking after more than 60 people. There were times when a cleaning lady administered injections, he said.
Nurses told him stories of patients dying in front of them due to lack of ventilators and oxygen. Having spent over $1500 on medicines and bribes Mr Kurbanov was eventually discharged after 10 days.
Foreign based Turkmen media are reporting on the third wave of infections but almost everyone inside the country are too scared to talk about it.The Turkmen.news website has identified at least 60 people who have died from Covid 19 since the start of the pandemic. Various media reports and independent sources indicate that Turkmenistan is being hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Yet Turkmen officials continue to say there have not been any incidents of COVID-19 in the country.
But the cases of two diplomats assigned to Turkmenistan suggest the virus is indeed there — though in both cases their governments remain quiet. Such silence helps allow Turkmen authorities to continue spouting the official line that the country is somehow unaffected by the global pandemic.
Guzide Uchkun is the widow of Kemal Uchkun, a Turkish diplomat who died in a hospital in Turkmenistan on July 7. She recently filed a lawsuit against Turkey’s ambassador to Turkmenistan, Togan Oral, and several other government officials for their failure to transport her husband from Turkmenistan to Turkey for proper medical treatment. Starting in January 2018, Kemal Uchkun was stationed at the Turkish Embassy in Turkmenistan as an adviser on religious affairs.
On June 27, 2020, Uchkun was admitted to a hospital. His symptoms were breathing problems, heavy coughing, and a fever, signs associated with the coronavirus. Doctors treated him for pneumonia.
Guzide Uchkun says Turkmen doctors treated her husband with antibiotics, which don’t work against viruses. Turkish doctors said the X-rays they received of Uchkun from Turkmenistan indicated there was a better than 90 percent chance he had COVID-19. Guzide’s lawyer, Ahmet Basci, told Azatlyk that the embalming of Uchkun’s body was done in Turkmenistan, so a subsequent autopsy in Turkey was unable to determine if the diplomat’s death was due to the coronavirus.
But Basci said Uchkun’s family showed the chest X-rays to other Turkish forensic experts after his death. Basci said those experts had no doubt that Uchkun had died of COVID-19 and that he probably would have survived if he had been brought back to Turkey.
“I pleaded [with Turkish authorities] to send a medical transport plane or any kind of plane to bring my husband back to Turkey,” Guzide told the Turkish newspaper Sozcu. “I filled out applications and provided all the necessary documents every day until his death.”
Turkmen officials did not give official permission for a Turkish plane to come to Ashgabat, which has not been accepting international flights since March, until after Uchkun died on July 7.
Publicly, Turkish authorities have still not criticized Turkmenistan’s reluctance to allow an ill diplomat to be evacuated home for treatment, although it seems cause for some outrage. Ankara has also not said anything that might question Turkmenistan’s claim of being free of the coronavirus.
Guzide Uchkun also plans to file a lawsuit against Turkmen authorities, charging them with negligence and obstruction.
Britain’s ambassador to Turkmenistan, Hugh Philpott, is known for promoting the culture of Central Asian countries where he has been stationed, sometimes through song.
Philpott performed a Tajik song when he was ambassador to Tajikistan and recently sang a Turkmen tune. On December 16, Philpott tweeted that he was “recuperating from a virus trending in the ‘physical world.” Philpott did not say where he was recuperating, but he has been in Turkmenistan since returning from a trip abroad in late September. The British government has not publicly commented on Philpott’s condition or where he contracted the virus.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has also not confirmed that the coronavirus is in Turkmenistan, despite making an official visit. The WHO sent a team to Turkmenistan in July after more than two months of delays caused, apparently, by Turkmen authorities’ procrastination in giving official permission.
The WHO team was guided around Turkmenistan and afterward could only say they had not seen any clear evidence of the coronavirus in Turkmenistan, though they did express concern at “reports of increased cases of acute respiratory disease or pneumonia of unknown cause” and advised “activating the critical public-health measures in Turkmenistan, as if COVID-19 was circulating.”
The team also recommended that “surveillance and testing systems are scaled up, and that samples are sent to WHO reference laboratories for confirmed testing.”
Eurasianet.org contacted the WHO about that and in December received a reply that “unfortunately, due to many travel restrictions currently in place, this has as yet not been possible.”
Given the Turkmen government’s penchant for exaggeration, if not outright lying, it is not surprising that officials there continue to cling to their narrative that the coronavirus has been prevented from entering Turkmenistan. It is somewhat surprising that international organizations and individual governments are not challenging this claim by the Turkmen government, especially considering the heavy impact it is having on the citizens of Turkmenistan.
Until the next time Stay Safe.
Total Cases Worldwide – 231,087,421
Total Deaths Worldwide – 4,735,968
Total Recovered Worldwide – 207,765,666
Total Active Cases Worldwide – 18,585,787 (8.0 % of the total cases)
Total Closed Cases Worldwide – 212,501,634