Kabul (EFE) – Empty beds and scattered toys are all that remains of the child malnutrition treatment center run by the NGO Action Against Hunger in Kabul, once a point of reference for the most vulnerable families but forced to close due to cuts in United States aid.
Until its closure, the clinic, located in Kabul’s Haji Baba Hospital, was more than just a medical center: it was a lifeline for poor Afghan families struggling with child malnutrition.
“These therapeutic feeding units are vital. We treat severely malnourished children, children so weak they can’t walk, crawl or even eat. Some two-year-olds weigh only 4 to 5 kg. Without our support, they have nowhere to go,” the NGO’s national director, Cobi Rietveld, told EFE.
The dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), ordered by US President Donald Trump to save money, has nipped its activity in the bud.
About 65 severely malnourished children were treated each month, with some staying for long periods, many coming from the poorest neighborhoods of Kabul, the center’s pediatrician, Abdul Hameed Salehi, told EFE.
This will represent a huge burden on other hospitals. Rietveld said it will be difficult for the remaining centers to cope.
“It’s very difficult. When this unit closes, as it did this week, there is no other place to refer these children. Most hospitals do not have the capacity or the expertise. Other NGOs are facing similar budget cuts. If children do not receive medical care, they are at high risk of dying,” he added.
Over 3 million children at risk
The clinic’s closure coincides with the worst malnutrition crisis in Afghanistan’s recent history.
According to the World Food Program, 3.5 million children will be at risk of malnutrition by 2025, while one in three Afghans goes to bed hungry, and over half the population requires urgent humanitarian assistance.
The closure of the center, coupled with the withdrawal of other NGOs from Afghanistan due to the cut-off of US aid, will exacerbate the crisis in this Asian country.
“Here, all services were free: medicines, food for mother and child, three meals a day, and treatment. The closure of this center means that parents now have to pay for everything, which they cannot afford,” said Rietveld.
“When your child’s bones are visible, when he cries out of weakness, only a mother understands that pain. This center gave me hope. It saved my son,” Basima, a mother whose son recovered at the Kabul center (one of seven the NGO ran in Afghanistan) told EFE.
It is with great disappointment that mothers still arrive at the clinic and find the doors closed without an answer.
Not an isolated case
The closure is not an isolated case as the World Health Organization warned in March that 80% of the health services it supports in Afghanistan could close due to lack of funding.
By early March, 167 health facilities had closed, affecting over 1.6 million people in 25 provinces.
Afghanistan’s economic and humanitarian crisis worsened after the Taliban took power in August 2021, but the suspension of US aid is the last straw for many organizations.
Rietveld said that proposals would be made to attract the investment needed to reopen the clinic, although he pessimistically admitted that the most realistic option for achieving this goal was US support.
Until this investment is made, the clinic will be left with unfulfilled promises and a growing crisis that will force the international community to act quickly if it wants to save the lives of millions of Afghan children. EFE
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