A spokesperson for the World Health Organization said on Friday that it is estimated that by the end of this year, about 3.2 million children in Afghanistan will be severely malnourished, of which 1 million children are at risk of death due to lower temperatures.
Aid agencies have warned of the famine because the drought coincided with the economic recession after the Taliban took over Western economic support in August. The health sector has been hit particularly hard, with many medical staff fleeing due to unpaid wages.
Margaret Harris told reporters in Geneva over the phone in the capital Kabul: “This is an uphill battle because hunger covers this country.” “The world cannot and cannot abandon Afghanistan.”
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Harris said that night temperatures drop below zero degrees Celsius, and colder temperatures are expected to make the elderly and young people more susceptible to other diseases. She added that in some places, due to widespread shortages, people are cutting down trees to provide fuel for hospitals.
Harris did not have figures on the number of children who had died of malnutrition, but described “the ward was crowded with small children”, including a seven-month-old baby whom she described as “smaller than a newborn”.
The country’s measles cases are on the rise, and WHO data shows that 24,000 clinical cases have been reported so far.
“For malnourished children, measles is a death sentence. If we don’t act quickly, we will see more deaths,” Harris said.
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