International Courant
KARACHI, Pakistan – The World Meals Program on Wednesday referred to as the current earthquakes in Afghanistan a “catastrophe on high of a catastrophe” and urged the worldwide group to supply humanitarian help to the war-torn nation.
Restricted assist is making aid efforts tough after earthquakes and aftershocks rocked the religiously conservative nation since Saturday. The quakes killed at the least 2,400 individuals and injured greater than 2,000, the Taliban-led authorities mentioned. The quakes are among the many deadliest on the planet thus far this 12 months, after the quakes in Turkey and Syria killed an estimated 50,000 individuals.
“In Afghanistan, this can be a catastrophe on high of a catastrophe, on high of a catastrophe, on high of a catastrophe,” Philippe Kropf, head of communications on the World Meals Program (WFP) Afghanistan, mentioned in an interview.
“We have now 50 million individuals who do not know the place their subsequent meal will come from, and the World Meals Program can solely help 3 million individuals because of an enormous funding hole,” Kropf mentioned in Herat, a northwestern province the place the WFP has began distributing rations .
“All homes have been utterly razed to the bottom” and well being facilities have been decreased to rubble, he added. “Livelihoods have been destroyed.”
The WFP will initially present every household of seven with 2,100 kilocalories per day for a month, and will contemplate different types of help equivalent to money within the coming weeks, Kropf mentioned. To fight malnutrition, it has distributed energy-rich cookies and a particular peanut butter.
“Breastfeeding ladies are among the many most weak,” he mentioned, together with kids and pregnant ladies. “If we may help them stop malnutrition, we are going to achieve this, as a result of stopping malnutrition is less expensive than treating malnutrition.”
Girls and kids make up two-thirds of the wounded in Afghanistan, Dr. Alaa AbouZeid, head of the World Well being Group’s emergency response within the nation, mentioned Monday.
Afghanistan’s well being care system, which is sort of solely depending on international assist, has suffered crippling funds cuts within the two years because the Taliban took energy and far of the worldwide assist that had been the spine of the financial system was minimize off.
Afghans have endured a long time of battle, because the battle to oust Soviet Union forces in 1979-1989 to the U.S. efforts to overthrow the Taliban authorities after the September 11, 2001 assaults and the Taliban’s victory in 2021.
The United Nations and humanitarian organizations have minimize the funds for the 2023 Afghanistan assist plan to $3.2 billion from $4.6 billion earlier this 12 months, within the wake of the Taliban authorities’s restrictions on feminine assist staff.
The WFP has already minimize rations and monetary assist to eight million Afghans this 12 months, underscoring the severity of the monetary challenges going through assist businesses in what the United Nations considers the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. REUTERS
Earthquakes in Afghanistan are a ‘catastrophe on high of a catastrophe’ – World Meals Programme
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