The World Food Programme called the recent earthquakes in Afghanistan a ‘catastrophe on top of a tragedy,’ and urged the international community to provide humanitarian aid to the war-torn country.
Since Saturday, the religiously orthodox nation has been rattled by earthquakes and aftershocks, making rescue operations difficult. Following earthquakes in Turkey and Syria that killed an estimated 50,000 people this year, the Taliban-run government in Afghanistan said that the shocks killed at least 2,400 people and injured over 2,000 more.
“In Afghanistan, this is a disaster on top of a disaster,” Philippe Kropf, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) head of communications in Afghanistan, said in an interview.
“We have 50 million people who do not know where they will get their next meal,” Kropf said in Herat, an area in the country’s northwest where the WFP has begun distributing rations, “and the World Food Program is only able to support 3 million people due to a massive funding shortfall.”
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According to him, “all the houses are completely flattened” and medical facilities have been reduced to rubble. “Livelihoods have been destroyed.”
Kropf noted that after a month of receiving 2100 calories per day from the WFP, each family of seven will be eligible for additional forms of help, including cash. To address malnutrition, it has started supplying high-energy biscuits and a customized peanut butter.
Breastfeeding mothers, newborns, and pregnant women are among the most vulnerable categories, according to him. “If we can help them prevent malnutrition, that’s how we do it, because preventing malnutrition is much cheaper than treating malnutrition.”
On Monday, Dr. Alaa AbouZeid, the chief of the World Health Organization’s emergency response in Afghanistan, stated that women and children constituted two-thirds of the injured in the country.
Since the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan two years ago, the majority of international assistance that had been supporting the country’s economy has been cut off. This has had a terrible impact on the country’s healthcare system, which was almost entirely reliant on foreign funds.
From the battle between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan (1979-1989), to the United States’ efforts to oust the Taliban rule in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, to the Taliban’s eventual victory in 2021, war has afflicted Afghanistan for decades.
The United Nations and other humanitarian groups have to remove $1.6 billion from Afghanistan’s 2023 aid plan due to the Taliban government’s ban on female aid workers.
The World Food Programme has already slashed rations and monetary support for eight million Afghans this year due to funding restrictions, despite the UN dubbing the situation in Afghanistan the world’s worst humanitarian calamity.
