Guldana is one of a growing number of hungry children being brought to the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul every day.
According to AP, hunger is seriously increasing in Afghanistan due to economic crisis weeks after the Taliban took control of the country.
Guldana’s father, Jinnat Gul, said he could not make enough money to feed Guldana and his five other children. He used to go from house to house to buy scrap and then sell it for a profit. But for 3 months now, the work has dried up and he hardly earns any money.
“In the past, I worked enough, I could buy food for my children. We can eat meat once or twice a week. Now, my family mainly lives on boiled potatoes,” Jinnat said.
The father-of-five said he sometimes only gives his children green tea-soaked bread just to “give them something to eat and stop crying”.
A four-month-old baby boy named Mohammed, emaciated, wrinkled because of malnutrition, is being treated at Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul. AP photo.
The World Food Program (WFP) said on Monday that the number of people on the brink of starvation has risen to 45 million in 43 countries. This number at the beginning of this year was 42 million people.
And Afghanistan is the source of the increase. According to WFP, the number of Afghans living in near-famine conditions has increased to 8.7 million, an increase of 3 million compared to the beginning of this year. Overall, nearly 24 million people in Afghanistan, 60% of the population, are suffering from acute hunger. An estimated 3.2 million children under the age of 5 in Afghanistan will be acutely malnourished by the end of the year.
“It is a crisis. It’s a disaster,” WFP Executive Director David Beasley said during a weekend visit to Afghanistan.
Baby Mohammed’s legs atrophied. Photo AP
WFP is rushing to feed Afghan families as the harsh winter begins, but it says it needs about $220 million a month by 2022 to fund its efforts.
This year’s severe drought in Afghanistan is one of the causes of increasing poverty and malnutrition among Afghan children. However, more and more people simply do not have the money to buy food.
The country’s economy shrank rapidly under the previous US-backed government.
However, the Afghan economy is still in a state of complete recession after the Taliban took power on August 15. The Taliban government is said to be mired in a financial crisis, short of cash. The reason is that the US and other Western countries have cut off direct financial support to the Afghan government, which makes up the bulk of their budgets.
Another child was hospitalized for malnutrition at the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul. AP photo.
In addition, the Taliban government cannot access the billions of dollars in the Afghan national stockpile stored abroad. As a result, millions of Afghans have not received a paycheck for months.
To make matters worse, hundreds of local medical facilities across the country have had to cut services or close altogether because of a lack of international funding. That is to say, families with malnourished children have to travel farther, to further hospitals to get care – or get nothing at all.
Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital had to expand the space for malnourished cases, said a doctor named Salahuddin Salah.
Newborn baby boy Mohammed suffered many misfortunes and disadvantages when his mother died, his father did not have enough income to take care of the baby. AP photo.
The doctor also added that at least 25 children brought to the hospital in a state of starvation due to starvation in the past 2 months have died. Most staff at the hospital, from doctors to nurses to sanitation workers, have not received a salary in the past 3 months.
On Monday, November 8, when an AP reporter visited the hospital, there were 18 children in the ward that were malnourished. Zia Mohammed, a nursing assistant, said that each week, the department receives about 30 new cases. “Since 2, 3 months now, our malnourished patients are increasing day by day,” said Mr. Zia.
In one bed, a 4-month-old boy named Mohammed was extremely emaciated, with shriveled flesh on his tiny limbs. Her body was thin and bony, the skin so thin that the veins on her forehead were like a map of small blue lines.
Mohammed was born a month premature and his mother died of complications during the birth. Mohammed’s father worked in the army of the ousted government and now has no job and no income since the Taliban took over Kabul. Mohammed was given milk bought at the market, but the milk was not of good quality, so he had diarrhea. The family gave the baby to eat bread soaked in tea.
