Alarm Over Intermarriage Health Risks in Tajikistan
Calls for restrictions on weddings between close relatives.
By Valentina Kasymbekova in Dushanbe (WP No. 15, 01-Dec-05)
When Parviz
Afzalshoev married his cousin, no one in his village in the mountainous
northeast of Tajikistan thought anything of it.
Weddings between close
relatives are common in Tajikistan and for Afzalshoev, a tall and handsome man,
starting a family was the next logical thing to do.
At first all seemed
well. The couple had six children in seven years, all of whom at first seemed
perfectly healthy. Sadly, that was soon to change.
“When he was two, our
first son was playing in the yard and fell down and didn’t get up. He was dead,”
said Afzalshoev. “It was very hard for us, and we transferred all our cares to
the younger child, the newborn girl. But she too died at about the same age and
just as suddenly.”
One after the other, Afzalshoev’s remaining four
children died in the same way. Doctors told the grieving couple that their
tragedy was the result of genetic problems brought on by centuries of
intermarriage among relatives in their region.
“My wife and I are in a
hopeless situation – we don’t want to separate, but we can’t reconcile ourselves
to the fact that we will be left childless,” said Afzalshoev.
A study
conducted by Professor Abdulmajid Pulatov found that in areas where
intermarriage is widespread, the number of ill people is five times greater than
in areas where it is not. His six-year research was fairly representative since
it involved examining 2.2 million people, about one third of the country’s
population.
Pulatov and other doctors have long been trying to raise the
alarm about the number of babies born with congenital defects, incurable hearing
and vision problems, mental illnesses and deformities – all of which they
believe result from marriages between close relatives, particularly cousins.
Pulatov also recorded higher than normal rates of infertility, stillborn babies,
albinism and epilepsy.
“We found many people with myopathy and muscle
weakness in almost every village and every family,” he said of an area north of
Dushanbe.
“We conducted observations on seven childless marriages between
relatives. They were dissolved and 12 of the divorced men and women remarried
and a year later they all had children.”
Pulatov saw children with
abnormally small eyes, or none at all, in the village of Pasob, 80 kilometres
north of Dushanbe. In the nearby Anzob area, he noted occasional cases of
unusually small heads, or the complete absence of a brain.
Firuza
Nasirova, a doctor of biology, says her research has shown that about 25 per
cent of children in some Tajik villages are born with defects, something she
puts down to gene pools depleted by generations of intermarriage.
In the
south, where the population is more mixed, these types of health problems occur
less frequently, the experts say.
Historically, marriage between
relatives, known as consanguinity, has been common in remote and mountainous
regions of Tajikistan where the difficulty of travel and hostility to
neighbouring regions limited marital opportunities.
The bloody civil war
of the early Nineties tended to exacerbate such feelings, with many families
unwilling to forge marital ties with people from elsewhere.
“How can I
ever have family ties with them?” said a woman angrily when asked by IWPR if she
would consider marrying her daughter to a man from a distant region. “Eleven men
in our family died at the hands of people who are hostile to us.”
Surayo
Komilova agreed, “I will never take a bride from another region into my home.
They cook, dress and talk differently and conduct celebrations and funerals
differently. I'd never be able to get used to this, and there would be constant
fights in the family. It is better to take a girl from among our relatives, or
at least from our village.”
Mamlakat Kadirova, who comes from the south
and is a mother of seven, said she would marry off her daughters to relatives
for their own benefit.
“I will never give my daughter to a mother-in-law
who will torment her and force her to work for a huge family,” said Kadyrova.
“Only relatives – my sister or aunt – can take the bride into their house as a
person who is close to them and not an unpaid housekeeper.”
Akmal
Sharipov, a father of 11 children, said he favours marriage between relatives as
a way of keeping wedding costs down. Sharipov has been saving for years to pay
for the weddings of his seven sons, which could cost anywhere from 3,000 to
5,000 US dollars. The major expenses include the "bride-price" payment to the
future wife's family, presents for her relatives, and food including rice, sugar
and flour for her parents. The bride also expects a chest full of clothes and
new shoes, he said
“If you don’t fulfil all these conditions, the wedding
doesn’t take place,” said Sharipov. “I have seven sons. How can I earn so much
money?
“Only relatives or close friends in the same village can treat
our situation with understanding and not demand large expenditures.”
Although finances aren’t a problem in the Mutalibov family who live in a
prestigious district of Dushanbe, Khaelbi Mutalibova is also looking for spouses
for her children among relatives.
“Many people will wish to come into our
prosperous home as members of the family, but we need to be especially careful
when our children marry and start families. There are a lot of drug addicts and
sick people among the young, including AIDS patients,” said Mutalibova. “Why
should we take a risk and take a person we don’t know well into our home?”
The head of the medical and genetics department at the Institute of
Gynaecology and Obstetrics, Olga Romanova, warns that unless Tajiks change their
attitude towards consanguinity, health problems caused by the practice will
continue to rise, which in turn could lead to social problems.
“The
problems of financially providing for invalids, medical aid and employment are
an intolerable burden for our country. And what a misery it is for parents to
look after an incurably ill child all their lives.”
The concerns of
Romanova and other doctors are falling on deaf ears, however, with the Tajik
health ministry insisting that little can be done to solve the problem, as
marriages between cousins are perfectly legal.
Ordinary Tajiks also
appear unconcerned.
“Why do the doctors scare us?” asked 70-year-old
Holbibi Nazarova. “As long as I can remember, all our family always married
their cousins or more distant relatives. And everyone in our family is normal.
They work and study. And we do not intend to change the traditions of our
fathers.”
Valentina Kasymbekova is an IWPR contributor in Tajikistan.
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