“This is like the end of the world for me. I feel so much pain. Can you imagine what I’ve been through watching my children die?” says Amina.
He has lost six children. None of them lived beyond three years and now another is fighting to survive.
Bibi Hajira is seven months old but the size of a newborn. Suffers from a severe acute malnutritionand takes up half a bed in the ward of the regional hospital in Jalalabad, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, Afghanistan.
“My children are dying of poverty. All I can feed them is dry bread and water that I heat by placing it in the sun,” says Amina, almost screaming in anguish.
What is more devastating is that His story is not at all the only one, and that many more lives could be saved with timely treatment.
Bibi Hajira is one of 3.2 million children suffering from acute malnutritionwhich is causing havoc in the country. It is a condition that has plagued Afghanistan for decades, instigated by 40 years of war, extreme poverty and a multitude of factors in these years that the Taliban took control.
But the situation has reached an unprecedented abyss.
Too weak to move
It’s hard to imagine what 3.2 million means, so the stories from just one small hospital room can help us understand this unfolding disaster.
There are 18 minors in seven beds. It’s not a temporary increase, it’s how it is every day. There is no crying or babbling, the unnerving silence in the room broken only by the sharp beeping of the heart rate monitor.
Most children are not sedated or on oxygen masks. They are awake but too weak to move or make a sound.
Three-year-old Sana, who wears a purple robe and covers her face with her tiny arm, shares a bed with Bibi Hajira. Her mother died giving birth to her little sister a few months ago, so her aunt Laila takes care of her. Laila touches my arm and raises seven fingers; one for each child you have lost.
In the neighboring bed is three-year-old Ilham, tiny for his age, skin peeling off his arms, legs and face. Three years ago, his sister died at the age of two.
It’s too painful just to look at Asma, who is one year old. She has beautiful brown eyes and long eyelashes, but they are wide open, barely blinking, breathing heavily in an oxygen mask that covers most of her small face.
Dr. Sikandar Ghani, watching her, shakes his head. “I don’t think I’m going to survive,” he predicts. Asma’s little body has gone into septic shock.
Despite the circumstances, until that moment, there was stoicism in the room; the nurses and mothers doing their jobs, feeding the children, comforting them. Everything stops, a discomposed look is fixed on many faces.
Nasiba, Asma’s mother, is crying. She lifts her veil and bends down to kiss her daughter.
“I feel like my flesh is melting. “I can’t stand to see her suffer like this,” she moans. Nasiba has already lost three children. “My husband is a day laborer. When they give him work, we eat.”
Dr. Ghani tells us that Asma could have a heart attack at any time. We leave the room. Less than an hour later, he died..
Fall of international financing
700 children have died in the last six months in this hospital, more than three a daythe Taliban Public Health department in Nangarhar informed us. A staggering number, but there would be many more deaths if this facility was not kept running with funding from the World Bank and UNICEF.
Until August 2021, international funds provided directly to the previous government financed almost all public healthcare in Afghanistan.
When the Taliban regained control, The money stopped coming in due to the international sanctions imposed on them. That unleashed the collapse of the health system. Relief agencies acted to provide what was supposed to be a temporary emergency response.
It has always been an unsustainable solution and, now, in a world distracted by so many other things, funds for Afghanistan have shrunk. Likewise, the Taliban government’s policies, specifically its restrictions against women, mean that donors are reluctant to provide funding.
“We inherited a problem of poverty and malnutrition, which has been made worse by natural disasters such as floods and climate change. The international community should increase humanitarian aid, they should not link it to political and internal affairs,” Hamdullah Fitrat, the spokesperson in charge of the Taliban government, told us.
In the last three years we have gone to more than a dozen health centers in the country and we have seen a rapid deterioration of the situation. During each of our recent visits to hospitals, we have seen children dying.
But we’ve also seen evidence that proper treatment can save them. Bibi Hajira, who was in a fragile condition when she arrived at the hospital, is feeling much better now and has been discharged, Dr. Ghani confirmed to us by phone.
“If we had more medicines, facilities and personnel, we could save more children. Our staff is strongly committed. “We work tirelessly and we are ready to give more,” he said.
“I also have children. When a child dies, we also suffer. “I understand what must be going on in the hearts of parents.”
One child after another
Malnutrition is not the only cause of the rise in mortality. Other preventable and curable diseases are also killing children.
In the intensive care unit, next to the malnutrition ward, six-month-old Umrah is fighting severe pneumonia. He cries intensely as a nurse injects an intravenous drip into his body. Nasreen, Umrah’s mother, is sitting next to her, tears streaming down her face.
“How I wish I could die instead of her. “I’m so scared,” he says. Two days after we visited the hospital, Umrah died.
These are the stories of those who were able to get to a hospital. Countless others cannot. Only one in five children who require hospital treatment can receive it at Jalalabad hospital.
The pressure on the center is so intense that almost immediately after Asma died, a tiny three-month-old baby, Aaliya, was moved to the half of the bed that Asma had left empty.
No one in the room had time to process what had happened. There was another seriously ill minor who had to be treated.
The Jalalabad hospital serves the population of five provinces, which the Taliban government estimates at about five million people. And now the pressure has increased. Most of the more than 700,000 Afghan refugees who were forcibly deported by Pakistan since late last year remain in Nangarhar.
In the communities surrounding the hospital, we found evidence of another alarming statistic released this year by the UN: that 45% of children under 5 years old in Afghanistan are stunted; They are smaller than they should be.
Robina’s 2-year-old son, Mohammed, cannot stand on his own yet and is much shorter than his normal height.
“The doctor tells me that if he receives treatment for the next three to six months, he will be fine. But we can’t even buy food. How are we going to pay for the treatment?” Robina asks.
She and her family had to leave Pakistan last year and now live in a dry, dusty settlement in the Sheikh Misri area, a short drive from Jalalabad along muddy roads.
“I fear that he will become disabled and will never be able to walk,” says Robina.
“In Pakistan, we also had a difficult life. But there was work. Here my husband, a day laborer, barely gets a job. “We could have taken him for treatment if we were still in Pakistan.”
UNICEF says stunting can cause severe irreversible physical and cognitive damagewhose effects can last a lifetime and even affect the next generation.
“Afghanistan is already facing economic problems. If large sections of our future generation are physically or mentally disabled, how can our society help them, questions Dr. Ghani.
Mohammad can be saved from permanent damage if he receives treatment before it is too late.
But community nutrition programs run by relief agencies in Afghanistan have suffered. more dramatic cutsmany of them have received only a quarter of the assistance they need.
On every street in Sheikh Misri we meet families with malnourished or stunted children.
Sardar Gul has two malnourished children: 3-year-old Umar and 8-month-old Mujib, a bright-eyed little boy she carries on her lap.
“A month ago, Mujib’s weight dropped to less than three kilos. Once we were able to register him with a relief agency, we started receiving food packages. That has really helped him,” says Sardar Gul.
Mujib now weighs six kilos, still a couple of kilos underweight, but significantly better.
It is evidence that Timely intervention can save children from death and disability.
*With additional reporting by Imogen Anderson and Sanjay Ganguly
click here to read more stories from BBC News Mundo.
You can also follow us on YouTube, instagram, TikTok, x, Facebook and in our new whatsapp channelwhere you will find breaking news and our best content.
And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.
- How the Taliban are financed since they took power in Afghanistan
- What happened to the women who faced the Taliban in Afghanistan?
- What is prohibited for women and men with the new and strict rules imposed in Afghanistan by the Taliban Ministry of Morale