Heartbreaking Pictures Show 'Malnutrition Epidemic' Facing Afghanistan's Children

The little girl in the bed could have been a four-year-old in any country.

She wore a pink top with sparkles, pink trousers, and her tiny fingers and toes were painted in a glittery red polish.

But Yalda is in Afghanistan, and her body is so weak it can no longer support the weight of her head. Even raising her skeletally thin arm to scratch her face seemed an impossible effort.

She was conscious but not really alert, yet there was no doubt about the pain she was in. By her side, her mother, unable to ease her child’s pain or summon any hope for her future.

Her daughter is one of the more than one million children in Afghanistan at risk of death from acute malnutrition. The hospital doesn’t have the medication she needs to treat her and her family are out of money to buy it.

They sold their only cow when she became ill. That money is almost gone now. They are out of options and their daughter is running out of time.

It is of no comfort that the family are surrounded by dozens of others in exactly the same position.

When I spoke with the doctor on the intensive care ward, he told me they only had milk to treat the patients. I thought I had misheard him. Sadly, I had not.

Since the Taliban took control five years ago, foreign humanitarian aid has fallen by 70%, and billions of dollars are frozen in foreign accounts.

Poverty is rocketing due to unemployment and women being barred from most work.

UNICEF says across Afghanistan, 3.7 million children are acutely malnourished, with around one million with life-threatening severe acute malnutrition.

Those with the misfortune of pre-existing conditions face the compounding misery of a lack of nutrition on top of what they already cope with.

On another ward, we heard 7-year-old Anisa before we saw her. A little girl who every couple of seconds seemed to mew with pain. Her mum and auntie fanned her with an old magazine to try to cool her in the baking heat of the ward.

They couldn’t afford the medication for her type one diabetes, then malnourishment took hold. When she reached the hospital, doctors started to suspect a tumour. They won’t be able to find out, the tests are too expensive.

Her mother can barely speak through her tears but her words are very familiar.

A family in poverty, a husband unemployed and a child they cannot afford to help. There is defeat in her eyes and fear.

The desperation is palpable and felt by every mother we met, as they feared whether their child would make it through the day and, if they did, how on earth they could properly care for them.
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