KABUL (AP) — In
Kabul’s main children’s hospital, 2½-year-old Guldana is sitting up in her bed, but she’s too exhausted to even open her eyes. Her tiny body is wrapped in a blanket, only her emaciated face showing.
She’s one of a growing number of near-starving children who are brought every day to the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in the Afghan capital. Hunger is increasing dramatically in Afghanistan, fueled by an economic crisis that has only gotten worse since the Taliban seized power in the country nearly three months ago.
Guldana’s father, Jinnat Gul, said he can hardly afford to feed her and his other five children. He used to work going house to house collecting scrap goods and selling them. But for the past three months, work has dried up and he has hardly made any money.
“Before, I had enough work, I could provide food. We could have meat one or two times a week,” he said. Now his family mainly gets by on boiled potatoes. He said sometimes he only has bread soaked in green tea for his children, “just to give them something so they stop crying.”
The UN’s World Food Program said Monday that the number of people on the edge of famine has risen to 45 million in 43 countries. The number is up from 42 million earlier this year.
Afghanistan is the source of most of that increase. The number of Afghans living in near-famine conditions has risen to 8.7 million, up by 3 million from earlier this year, the WFP said. Overall, almost 24 million people in Afghanistan, or 60% of the population, suffer from acute hunger. An estimated 3.2 million children under age 5 are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year.
“It’s a crisis. It’s a catastrophe,”
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