UNICEF warns 1 million Afghan children face life-threatening malnutrition

One million children in Afghanistan are suffering from life-threatening malnutrition in a worsening new crisis hitting the country, the United Nations warned, according to Euronews.

Across Afghanistan, 3.7 million children suffer from wasting, meaning they are acutely malnourished, the UN children’s agency UNICEF said.

Among that number are “one million children who are suffering from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition,” UNICEF’s Afghanistan country representative Tajudeen Oyewale said.

“If there is no treatment and we are not able to act fast, that one million number are at risk of dying,” he told a media briefing in Geneva from Kabul.

Children under two years old make up more than 80% of severe acute malnutrition cases in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has endured repeated periods of widespread hunger in recent decades as it has struggled through civil war and other crises.