ROME: Child malnutrition has reached critical levels in a third of Afghanistan’s provinces and is expected to worsen as funding shortfalls force cuts in food distributions and other support, the UN World Food Program said Tuesday.
“We must act now to stem the rise in child deaths, which this crisis is provoking,” John Aylieff, WFP’s country director in Afghanistan, said in a statement, adding that “it is already too late for too many.”
Afghanistan continues to recover from decades of conflict and upheaval, including the chaotic withdrawal of US forces in 2021 as the Taliban took power.
Olga Cherevko, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office in Afghanistan, said nutrition specialists report that “wasting among children has worsened this year in over three-quarters of the country.” Children suffering from a condition known as wasting are acutely malnourished, become very thin for their height, and need immediate therapeutic feeding.
But “too many children arrive at health facilities severely malnourished” while others never make it, Cherevko told reporters at UN headquarters by video from Afghanistan, where she has traveled across the country in recent months and weeks.
