KABUL (Al Jazeera) – The United Nations aid chief has released $45m in emergency funds to Afghanistan in a bid to prevent Afghanistan’s battered healthcare system from collapsing.
Martin Griffiths, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said in a statement on Wednesday that he was releasing funds from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund to boost life-saving support in Afghanistan.
“Allowing Afghanistan’s healthcare delivery system to fall apart would be disastrous,” he said, adding that medicines, medical supplies and fuel were running out and that essential healthcare workers were not being paid.
“People across the country would be denied access to primary health care such as emergency caesarean sections and trauma care.”
Afghanistan’s healthcare system was plunged into crisis after the Taliban swept into power last month. International donors, including the World Bank and European Union, have frozen funding to Afghanistan, complicating aid deliveries and leaving many health facilities understaffed.
The funds will go to the UN’s health and children’s agencies, allowing them – with the help of partner NGOs – to keep hospitals, COVID-19 centers and other health facilities operating until the end of the year.
“The UN is determined to stand by the people of Afghanistan in their hour of need,” Griffiths said.
Aid agencies have warned of an “impending humanitarian crisis” unless aid flows resume in the country. The World Health Organization said earlier this month that 90 percent of its clinics were slated to close imminently as the situation in Afghanistan was becoming increasingly desperate.
The International Monetary Fund has expressed deep concern about the country’s economic situation. IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said small-scale transfers of remittances had been granted, but that global lender’s engagement with Afghanistan remains suspended.
Filipe Ribeiro, Afghanistan representative for Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF), told Reuters last month that “one of the great risks for the health system here is basically to collapse because of lack of support”.
Aid agencies that are still operative have seen a significant increase in demand as other facilities are unable to fully function.