Children dying of malnutrition in Afghanistan: officials

Shafaq News/ Children die famine in Afghanistan, local and international sources said on Saturday, after warnings that one million young people there may face life-threatening malnutrition at the end of the year.

In Ghor, one of the affected provinces, at least 17 children among those taken to the hospital have died of malnutrition in the past six months, the province’s public health director Mullah Mohammad Ahmadi told AFP.

Almost 300 have been treated for hunger.

Hundreds of children are at risk starvation in central parts of the country, he said.

A spokesman for United Nations Afghanistan’s children’s agency said he could not confirm the death toll in Ghor but feared “many children are paying the ultimate price”.

UNICEF’s Salam Al-Janabi said the agency’s surveillance network had been disrupted and relied on anecdotal reports, but “we are very painfully aware that this is something we are on the verge of, or in the middle of”.

Then Taliban swept to power in mid-August, Afghanistan has plunged deeper into an already terrible humanitarian crisis. The effects of drought, rising food prices and job losses have been exacerbated by almost stagnant international aid and funding.

The UN has warned that by the end of the year, one million children under the age of five in Afghanistan are expected to need treatment for life-threatening “acute severe malnutrition”, while another 3.3 million will be affected by acute malnutrition.