Last Updated: 2003-01-06 12:36:25 -0400 (Reuters Health)

KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Sunday it is airlifting and driving medical supplies to remote mountain villages in northeastern Afghanistan as a whooping cough epidemic spreads and threatens the lives of 40,000 children.

The World Health Organisation has estimated that more than 60 children died after an outbreak of whooping cough in seven villages in the mountains of Badakhshan province in October, but it could only confirm 17 deaths in the barely accessible region.

The Afghan government puts the death toll at over 100 people.

The UN said the outbreak appears to have spread from the district of Khwahan to neighbouring Darwaz district, and said it aims to give up to 80,000 people in the area a 2-week course of antibiotics to protect them against the disease.

"At the moment the outbreak is relatively isolated and the hope is that we can contain it and it won't spread any further...if we can get antibiotics to people who are already infected," said Edward Carwardine of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

If left untreated in areas without healthcare and where people are already malnourished, the disease can kill about 15% of its victims, UN World Health Organisation (WHO) officials said.

Officials said supplies of erythromycin will be airlifted by helicopter and driven across the border from Tajikistan to try to protect as many people as possible, and vaccinations will be given to provide longer-term protection.

An emergency team from the Afghan ministry of health, the UN and aid agencies flew to the region last Thursday to assess the extent of the epidemic, take samples for laboratory confirmation and train local health workers.

Their findings so far have been worrying. "From what we know so far in the district of Darwaz, in every single house people are coughing," said the WHO's Yon Fleerackers.

Fleerackers said the area's very remoteness means the disease is more likely to be contained, especially with people not moving about much during the freezing winter months. But he said the epidemic is still a concern.

"It is quite an exceptional thing to have a pertussis outbreak on this scale," he told Reuters. "It has been spreading very quickly."

Thousands of Afghan children die every year of preventable diseases such as whooping cough and measles. Many parts of Badakhshan are so remote they are not reachable by road, while other villages can only be accessed from Tajikistan to the north.