KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that it has treated approximately 234,200 children for severe acute malnutrition across Afghanistan since the beginning of 2024.
In a statement on Friday, July 5, UNICEF reported that in May, out of 1,198,823 children screened for wasting, 56,017 were admitted for treatment, with 56% of them being girls. Among these, 3,449 were in severe condition.
The UN children’s agency also highlighted that since January, it has vaccinated over 600,000 children against measles and provided safe drinking water access to approximately 314,000 people.
Following the collapse of the Western-backed republic government and the Taliban’s subsequent takeover in August 2021, Afghanistan’s economy collapsed, plunging the landlocked country into its worst humanitarian crisis.
Additionally, the country has been grappling with numerous natural disasters such as earthquakes, heavy rains, flooding, and landslides in recent times, which, in addition to human cost, cause significant financial losses for the already impoverished population.
The UN estimates that this year, over half of Afghanistan’s population, 23 million people, with a significant portion being women and children, require humanitarian assistance.
Earlier, Save the Children reported that over 6 million children in Afghanistan, or six out of ten, will face crisis or emergency levels of hunger this year. The agency also projected that nearly 3 million children under the age of five in Afghanistan will suffer from acute malnutrition in 2024.
Meanwhile, humanitarian agencies have been facing one of the most severe funding shortfalls in recent years. The UN says that its $3.07 billion humanitarian appeal for Afghanistan remains significantly underfunded, with only 20% funded thus far.
The significant funding shortfalls have pushed many humanitarian organizations to reduce or even suspend operations and leave the country.
For the past two years, UN agencies have been warning that the funding shortfall puts millions of lives at risk, exacerbating the existing hardships of hunger, malnutrition, infectious diseases, and a severe drought.
