2 yıl önce

Malnutrition on the rise among Afghan children

An economic crisis is depriving Afghans from access to basic nutrition and several Afghan mothers are no longer able to breastfeed.

AA

Malnutrition causes noticeable slowdown in children’s development. Children aged 2-3 years with malnutrition look like babies of 8-10 months, despite their age, children cannot crawl, stand on their feet or walk.

The number of malnourished children has increased in war-torn Afghanistan with children at clinics unable to crawl or stand despite their age due to extreme hunger.

War, hunger and poverty began to affect children first in Afghanistan where international aid was cut off and the economic crisis deepened following the withdrawal of US forces.

Children suffering from malnutrition are deprived of their most basic right to breast milk.

Unable to reach vital basic foods due to ongoing poverty, most Afghan mothers have dried up their breast milk in a short time.

And the lack of food supplements has caused a visible slowdown in the development of infants and children.

Anadolu News Agency met families of suffering children and doctors in the region, where 2- and 3-year-olds in clinics appear much younger, like 8- to 10-month-old babies.

Babies cannot crawl, stand on their feet or walk. They appear to be carrying the weight of the country's 40-year civil war on their backs.

1M children at risk of death

According to a statement by UNICEF last October, 3.2 million children under the age of five in Afghanistan suffer from malnutrition and at least 1 million are facing the risk of death.

Save The Children announced on Jan 19 that the number of malnourished children under clinical follow-up has doubled since August last year.

The number of children under follow-up in clinics, which was 2,886 in August, rose to 4,673 in January this year, according to data Anadolu Agency obtained from Doctors Worldwide.

During that same period, the number of severe cases rose from 1,438 to 1,938.

Cemaleddin Abbas, a doctor with Doctors Worldwide, said because of malnutrition, mothers cannot properly feed their children.

"Recently, we have observed that the number of patients in the malnutrition clinics has doubled. This shows that the economic situation of the Afghan people is very bad. Most of the mothers who come to the clinics cannot provide their children with breast milk,” said Abbas.

The Taliban regained power in August amid the withdrawal of foreign forces and the collapse of the US-backed government. The interim administration, however, has yet to gain international recognition.

While international funding remains largely suspended, billions of dollars of Afghanistan’s assets abroad, mostly in the US, are frozen.

Half the population faces acute hunger, more than 9 million people have been displaced and millions of children are out of school, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

SOURCE: AA