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Crude oil touted as health cure in Azerbaijan

China Daily | Updated: 2019-04-13 06:42

NAFTALAN, Azerbaijan - Immersed up to her neck in a dark viscous liquid, Sulfiya smiles in delight, confident that the fetid substance will cure her painful condition.

Sulfiya, a Russian woman in her 60s, has traveled to Azerbaijan's northwestern city of Naftalan in the hope that crude oil baths at a local sanatorium will end her years of suffering from polyarthritis, a disease affecting the joints.

"This is so pleasant," she enthuses, despite the reek of engine oil.

Her naked dip in oil heated to just above body temperature lasts 10 minutes, after which an attendant scrapes the brown oil off her skin and sends her into a shower.

The native of Russia's Tatarstan region said she and her friends "have long dreamed of coming" for treatment in Naftalan.

After 10 days of bathing in crude oil, Sulfiya says she now feels "much better" and has even reduced her medication for the polyarthritis that she has had for 12 years.

"It is a gift from God," agrees 48-year-old Rufat, an Azerbaijani journalist who is undergoing treatment in the sanatorium called Sehirli, or "magic" in Azerbaijani.

Azerbaijan's vast oil deposits were discovered in the mid-19th century, making what was at the time part of the Russian Empire one of the first places in the world to start commercial oil production.

Oil exports to markets all over the world are the largest sector of Azerbaijan's economy, but the crude that comes from subsoil reservoirs in Naftalan is not suitable for commercial use.

Instead the local oil is used to treat to cure muscular, skin and bone conditions as well as gynecological and neurological problems.

According to a legend, which spa staff readily tell clients, the healing properties of Naftalan's "miraculous oil" were discovered by accident when a camel left to die near a pool of oil was cured.

Controversial benefits

Some specialists warn the method has dangerous side effects.

"Despite the stories of past cures, the use of crude oil for medicinal purposes has been condemned by Western doctors as potentially carcinogenic," former journalist Maryam Omidi wrote in a 2017 book about Soviet-era sanitariums.

In fact, the oil at Naftalan is almost 50 percent naphthalene, a carcinogenic substance found in cigarette smoke and mothballs that in large amounts can damage or destroy red blood cells.

But doctors and patients at Naftalan brush aside any misgivings and the sanatorium even has a small museum displaying crutches that once belonged to patients who have recovered from their illnesses.

Modern Naftalan is a blend of kitsch-looking high-end spas where a week's treatment costs some 1,000 euros ($1,128), and modest sanitariums where a week's treatment costs around 100 euros.

Agence France-presse

 Crude oil touted as health cure in Azerbaijan

A man bathes in a tub filled with Naftalan crude oil during a treatment session in Naftalan, Azerbaijan, on March 21.Mladen Antonov / Agence Francepresse

(China Daily 04/13/2019 page7)

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