New centre for malnourished children in the north

Pakai, aged 25 looks happy for the first time in months as she cradles her sickly young baby. “We thought that he would certainly die because he was so weak but now he is improving,” she told IRIN in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif. Pakai and a dozen more mothers nurse their malnourished babies in the first Therapeutic Feeding Centre (TFC) to be opened in a government hospital in northern Afghanistan. This new centre is being established and operated with assistance from the international NGO, Save the Children and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). According to several nutritional surveys carried out by different aid agencies over the past year, up to 16,000 children in northern Afghanistan were severely malnourished and needed supplementary feeding to recover and survive. Children under five constitute some 20 percent of the population of 2.5 million people in the five northern Afghan provinces of Balkh, Samangan, Jauzjan, Sar-e Pol and Faryab. These children mostly live in situations defined by poverty, chronic hunger, displacement and violence. A shortage of safe drinking water, as well as poor sanitation and hygiene, add to the already poor health status of many children in Afghanistan. Only 13 per cent of the population has access to safe drinking water, and only 12 per cent has access to adequate sanitation facilities. “Approximately half of the children in Afghanistan are malnourished,” Tony Naleo, a project officer with UNICEF in Mazar-e Sharif told IRIN. This motivated the agency to establish five TFCs in the provincial headquarters of the northern provinces, which opened at the end of April. UNICEF in cooperation with Save the Children and the Afghan ministry of health has just opened another TFC in Aibak, provincial capital of Samangan province about 100 km east of Mazar-e Sharif. Naleo maintained such initiatives would help Afghanistan to achieve the global health standard that calls for an end to undernourished children. Fitsum Assefa, a nutrition officer with UNICEF, told IRIN that children's poor state of health was directly related to poverty. “There is exclusive breast-feeding and in many cases the mothers do not have access to enough food or a balanced diet,” she said. According to the agency, one in 10 Afghan children are severely malnourished, more than half suffer from stunted growth, and one in every four children dies before the age of five - the fourth highest child mortality level in the world. However, malnutrition is not the only challenge to Afghan children. Mirwais Rabai, the director of the public health department in Balkh province told IRIN that over the past year diarrhoea has killed hundreds of children in the north. “Diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections and vaccine-preventable diseases are the key challenges to children’s health here,” he said. According to UNICEF, diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections account for around 41 per cent of all child deaths in this desperately poor nation of 26 million, with vaccine-preventable diseases accounting for another 21 percent. In addition, one in three Afghan children suffer from iodine deficiency, which can lead to goiter, learning difficulties and, in extreme cases cretinism. Meanwhile, back in the Mazar TFC, Pakai sounded optimistic about the future of her children. “In my village I have seen many children dying of diseases but things are improving now,” she said.