MSF sees high numbers of malnourished children as families struggle with poverty

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said this week the main cause of malnutrition in Afghanistan is poverty, and that children under the age of six months are often too young to be enrolled in many of the nutrition programs in the country.

According to an MSF report, often, families are forced to travel long distances to access health services either run by or supported by the organization in order to get help for their babies.

Often the inpatient wards for malnutrition, at MSF, are so crowded that two babies and their mothers share the same bed.

Some are treated by MSF, go home, and then come back again a few weeks later, the root causes of their malnutrition unaddressed, the report read.

For those with congenital diseases, this is because the necessary specialized hospital care is hard to find, often far away from home, and expensive.

Over the course of 2023, MSF-run and MSF-supported facilities in Herat, Lashkargah, and Kandahar admitted a total of over 10,400 children up to five years old.

Between January and April 2024 the facilities admitted 2,416 patients, a 5 percent increase compared to the same period last year.

Teams in Herat and Kandahar enrolled over 6,900 children in outpatient therapeutic feeding centers in 2023.

Khodadad, a resident of Baghlan province, says that his 18-month-old child is malnourished and because of financial problems he is not able to afford a private clinic.

He said his child is being treated in health centers supported by international organizations.

The World Food Program (WFP) said earlier this month that four million Afghans, of which 3.2 million are children under the age of five, currently suffer from severe malnutrition.

This United Nations agency also said that this year 23.7 million Afghans need humanitarian aid, of which 12.4 million people will face a high level of food insecurity by October.

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