Dikhyaa Mohanty 
UNICEF has warned that 1 million children in Afghanistan may die of acute malnutrition if urgent action wasn’t taken. The UN agency referred to the case of a two-year-old child and stated that having recently recovered from acute watery diarrhoea, two years old Soria is back in the hospital, this time suffering from oedema and wasting. Her mother has been by her bedside for the past 2 weeks anxiously waiting for Soria to recover.
According to the reports, UNICEF further added that without urgent action, 1 million children could die from severe acute malnutrition. As per Unicef estimates, 24.4 million Afghans, including 13.1 children, will need humanitarian assistance in 2022.
Of this number, 1.1 million are acutely malnourished children under the age of five years due to the food crisis and poor access to water, sanitation and hygiene services. Outbreaks of life-threatening diseases continue, with over 60,000 cases of measles reported in 2021. The Taliban’s Ministry of Public Health has claimed that the number of children suffering from malnutrition is around 4.4. million in Afghanistan.
