Pneumonia cases in Afghanistan are soaring, killing children, who are unable to access healthcare facilities, the UK-based international NGO Save the Children says.
Save the Children said in a report published on Monday that in December last year, half of the parents they spoke to in Afghanistan claimed their children had had pneumonia in the preceding two weeks and more than half (55%) of the surveyed households who needed healthcare in the prior three months hadn't been able to get it.
Pneumonia cases are soaring in Afghanistan, killing children who are unable to access healthcare facilities.
— Janti Soeripto (@SaveCEO_US) January 31, 2022
Frozen financial assets and withdrawn aid is driving the health system's collapse and it is children who are paying the highest price. https://t.co/679GVgRxfW
Almost 60 percent of those who hadn't been able to get healthcare also said they had had no money to pay for medical services, while 31 percent acknowledged they would only visit a clinic if the illness was life-threatening.
"Child pneumonia is surging in the middle of a hunger crisis that is ravaging young immune systems. The collapse of the health system, driven largely by frozen financial assets and withdrawn aid, comes at a deadly cost for Afghan children," the NGO said.
One doctor at a hospital said he had never seen so many cases of child pneumonia and severe malnutrition. According to the medical professional, 135 children had died in or on their way to the hospital last December, the majority fighting for breath from pneumonia and 40 severely malnourished.
Even before the latest crisis, pneumonia was responsible for more than one in five deaths of children under five in Afghanistan. According to the World Health Organization's latest figures, pneumonia is the single largest infectious cause of death in children worldwide, which killed 740,180 children under the age of 5 in 2019 and accounted for 22 percent of all deaths in children aged 1 to 5.
Andy Vermaut shares: Soaring pneumonia and starvation is killing thousands of children in Afghanistan: Pneumonia cases are soaring in Afghanistan and killing children unable to access healthcare facilities, leading humanitarian organisation for… https://t.co/BRBF9Fa64X Thanks. pic.twitter.com/M31pTueGe6
— Andy Vermaut (@AndyVermaut) February 2, 2022
"Every day we send several children straight to hospital for oxygen and emergency treatment. Recently, a baby didn’t survive. I called his mother to check up on him and she said he had passed away. It is the worst feeling imaginable," said Sadat, the team leader of one of the Save the Children's mobile health clinics.
Across the country, countless families are battling a bitter winter in freezing and damaged homes, unable to afford heating, their children going to bed cold at night without blankets or warm clothing.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
