A ‘silent emergency’ of malnutrition is ravaging Afghanistan

By Freshta Ghani and Atia FarAzar

It took 17 years for Rana to finally become a mother. But after her child was born, the baby girl was diagnosed with severe malnutrition and died soon after.

“There are 13 people in the house and it is difficult to take care of all of them, that’s why most days I forgot to eat food. [And] when I was very hungry, no food was left for me. Most days, I ate onions with bread,” she said in a phone interview from her home in Syed Abad district of Wardak province, explaining why her daughter was malnourished. 

Hamida is a mother in northern Samangan province. Her eyes hurt from exhaustion because she has a malnourished child. She must stay up every night and take care of her four-month-old daughter who weighs only as much as a newborn baby. When Hamida gave birth to Maryam, she weighed one kilogram and 300 grams, but now, after four months, she is just three kilograms.  

Hamida discovered she was pregnant after her husband, a former army soldier, fled to Iran, fearing persecution by the Taliban. Since she could not live alone, she went to live with her brother-in-law’s family. 

“My brother-in-law has nine children and is a day labourer. Sometimes he couldn’t find work at all, and he could hardly find a morsel of bread for us and his children,” she told Zan Times. 

“In the five months that I was at my brother-in-law’s house, we cooked six or seven times in total; the rest we only ate bread. I had meat only twice when we were invited to a wedding. We couldn’t buy vegetables and fruits,” she added.

When she was eight month pregnant, her mother took her to a clinic, where she was told she was suffering from malnutrition. Although its staff gave her biscuits for malnourishment, her child was born underweight. “When my daughter was born, she was so weak that I thought she was only skin and bones, I couldn’t hold her properly. I kept her in wool. She couldn’t suck milk from breast, that’s why I put a few drops of milk in her mouth with a syringe every hour, but now that I see that I don’t have enough milk. On the doctor’s advice, I fed her little biscuits that are for children suffering from malnutrition,” she said. 

“People in Afghanistan are today facing a food insecurity and malnutrition crisis of unparalleled proportions,” warned Ramiz Alakbarov, deputy special representative of the UN secretary general, in March. “The rapid increase in those experiencing acute hunger – from 14 million in July 2021 to 23 million in March 2022 – has forced households to resort to desperate measures such as skipping meals or taking on unprecedented debt to ensure there is some food on the table at the end of the day.”

“In Afghanistan a staggering 95 per cent of the population is not eating enough food, with that percentage rising to almost 100 per cent for female-headed households,” he added.

The crisis is most severe for the country’s young population. Afghanistan has one of the world’s highest rates of children suffering malnutrition, with 3.5 million children needing treatment. UNICEF warns that malnutrition “blunts the intellect, saps productivity, and perpetuates poverty.” Calling it a “silent emergency” for Afghanistan, a UNICEF reportputs the “rate of stunting in children under five” at 41 percent.” It warns that, “the rate of wasting, the extreme manifestation of severe acute malnutrition, in Afghanistan is extremely high: 9.5 percent.”

Dr. Shamsia Hakimi, a gynaecologist and obstetrician working in a public hospital in Herat have noticed that the number of malnourished mothers have increased. She says that more than 60 percent of pregnant women visiting the hospital are severely malnourished and require hospitalization and special care. “Every day, I encounter patients who do not have a normal pregnancy and are suffering from malnutrition. Sometimes, due to the increase in the number of patients, due to the lack of beds, we ask them to go to the central maternity hospital,” she said in a phone interview with Zan Times. 

Maria Ahmadi, a midwife in southern Helmand province, too, is seeing an increase in the number of mothers and children suffering from malnutrition. “I am seeing many patients in critical condition, if not treated on time, mothers and children could be at risk of death,” she said. 

Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees.