{"id":12503,"date":"2022-11-01T11:27:11","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T11:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/?p=12503"},"modified":"2022-11-01T11:27:11","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T11:27:11","slug":"child-malnutrition-cases-rise-nearly-50-in-afghanistan-as-hunger-hits-record-levels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/2022\/11\/child-malnutrition-cases-rise-nearly-50-in-afghanistan-as-hunger-hits-record-levels\/","title":{"rendered":"Child malnutrition cases rise nearly 50% in Afghanistan as hunger hits record levels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>MONITORING (SW) &#8211; The number of dangerously malnourished children admitted to Save the Children\u2019s mobile health clinics in Afghanistan has increased by 47% since January this year, with some babies dying before managing to receive any treatment, the children&#8217;s charity said today.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Demand for malnutrition treatment services has surged in recent months as families struggle to cope with Afghanistan\u2019s worst hunger crisis on record. In January, Save the Children\u2019s 57 mobile health teams admitted about 2,500 malnourished children for treatment. By September, that number had jumped to around 4,270 children admitted by 66 teams, according to newly released data.<\/p>\n<p>Experts had hoped to see a drop in hunger levels in Afghanistan during the recent summer harvest season, but the ongoing drought has led to failed crops and harvests have been much smaller than normal, forcing many rural families to sell land and livestock to buy food to feed their children.<\/p>\n<p>The other major driver of the food crisis \u2013 the collapse of the country\u2019s economy \u2013 has caused unemployment, poverty and food prices to skyrocket, with many families now only surviving on bread and water for weeks at a time.<\/p>\n<p>Humanitarian organisations have provided vast amounts of life-saving food, but the needs are so high that 50% of Afghanistan\u2019s population is still facing extreme hunger, with a 6 million children and adults \u2013 nearly one eighth of the population &#8211; one step away from famine.<\/p>\n<p>Save the Children doctors say they are overwhelmed with malnourished children \u2013 especially young girls who are often deprioritised when it comes to breastfeeding and complementary feeding compared to boys \u2013 and cannot keep up with the demand for services.<\/p>\n<p>Save the Children\u2019s Country Director in Afghanistan, Chris Nyamandi, said:\u201cHumanitarian organisations like Save the Children are stretched to the absolute limit trying to stop children dying from hunger every day in Afghanistan. But the truth is, with so many children facing life-threatening levels of hunger, we simply do not have the resources to save them all.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery day we\u2019re faced with the heart-wrenching decision \u2013 which children do we save? It\u2019s outrageous and horrifying to think that international leaders have the power to save these children\u2019s lives \u2013 by working to solve the economic crisis and reinstating humanitarian funding and long-term development assistance that was withdrawn when the Taliban retook control \u2013 but they have been too slow to find solutions and now children are dying as a result.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHumanitarian organisations have been sounding the alarm on Afghanistan for more than a year now. It\u2019s time the world stopped ignoring this catastrophic crisis and took action before many more children lose their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MONITORING (SW) &#8211; The number of dangerously malnourished children admitted to Save the Children\u2019s mobile health clinics in Afghanistan has increased by 47% since January this year, with some babies dying before managing to receive any treatment, the children&#8217;s charity said today. Demand for malnutrition treatment services has surged in recent months as families struggle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,984,979,7],"tags":[12,278,683],"class_list":["post-12503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-humanitarian-crisis","category-headline","tag-afghanistan","tag-children","tag-islamic-emirate"],"views":134,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12505,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12503\/revisions\/12505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swn.af\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}