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Kabul: Based on the report of the World Food Program, it is estimated that 18.9 million people – about half of the population of Afghanistan – will be severely infected by food insecurity between June and November, 2022
This report adds that 7.4 million children, lactating and pregnant women are at risk of severe malnutrition. According to the data of this institution, in August (July), food aid was given to more than two million people who were exposed to high food insecurity.
With the spread of poverty and hunger in the country, malnutrition among children in Herat has increased by fifty percent compared to last year.
According report malnutrition was spread among children of western regions of Afghanistan
More than two thousand malnourished children have been hospitalized in the special children’s hospital run by Doctors without border in Herat province during the last six months.
Jafit Nyonzima, head of Doctors without borders Children’s Hospital in Herat, said: “In the past month, we have admitted 374 children to the malnutrition department, but in the previous month, we admitted 200 children suffering from malnutrition. We have 86 beds in the hospital, but now more than 120 children are in the hospital. This shows that the number of our patients is high and continues to increase.”
Mothers say that their children are malnourished as a result of poverty and hunger.
Malnourished children are brought to this hospital from different parts of the western region.
The spread of malnutrition among children at the same time as the height of the economic crisis in the country is said to be alarming.
Zahid Khaled, a doctor at Doctors without Border Children’s Hospital in Herat, says: “In June and July, our patients increase, which is also due to diarrhea, and it peaks again in January and February, which is winter, because during that time “We have severe pneumonia.”
The United Nations Children’s Fund or UNICEF has recently announced that thirteen million Afghan children need urgent aid. According to this organization, three million Afghan children are malnourished, and immediate aid should be provided for them.
This UN body added that the economic crisis, hunger and poverty in Afghanistan have directly put children at risk.
