Almost half of children in Mazar malnourished

Thousands of Afghan children face starvation the United Nations Coordinator for Afghanistan warned on Tuesday after findings of a nutritional survey by the NGO Action Contre la Faim (ACF), in collaboration with the World Food Programme (WFP), concluded that almost half of the children in the northern city of Mazar were malnourished. "The nutritional surveys that are coming out now are especially alarming as the situation is not even close to being resolved," spokesperson for the United Nations Coordinator for Afghanistan Stephanie Bunker told IRIN. "If it is this bad now, the future can only be worse." These findings come after a recent nutrition and mortality survey conducted in remote villages in southern Faryab Province by Medecins sans Frontieres-Belgium (MSF) uncovered infant mortality rates of over 5 per 10,000 per day. The ACF report said that almost 10 percent of the children under 30 months surveyed suffered from acute malnutrition. It also reported widespread chronic and severe malnutrition, which results from prolonged inadequate diet and illness. It added that acute malnutrition - a sudden onset condition that can be brought on by illness - is almost 10 percent among children under 30 months, while the rate of chronic malnutrition among children surveyed, a long term problem caused by prolonged poor diet and regular illnesses was found to be 48 percent, and of severe malnutrition almost 20 percent. Bunker told IRIN that, if left unchecked, cases of chronic malnutrition could deteriorate in time and result in severe malnutrition and death. "Over the past few years, the under five mortality rate of children in Afghanistan was estimated to be about 25 percent or one in four deaths. Given the present situation, however, it could be much higher," she warned. The ACF report found that 8.8 percent of the children surveyed were newly displaced into Mazar since the summer by a combination of drought, fighting, or poverty. Although these figures are particularly alarming, they are "low" compared to other cities in Afghanistan, such as Kandahar and Kabul, where severe malnutrition affects over one-quarter of children under five and where global malnutrition rates range between 50 and 60 percent.