Afghanistan emergency
War. No school. Illness, and a high likelihood that you’ll die before reaching your fifth birthday. That’s the outlook for the majority of children living in Afghanistan. We’ve been helping them since 1976.
Children in Afghanistan have grown up knowing nothing but war. Ongoing conflicts have left the country’s infrastructure and government systems in disarray. This has made Afghanistan the second most dangerous place in the world for a child to grow up, or for a woman to give birth.
Illnesses such as malaria and respiratory infections mean children in Afghanistan have a one-in-four chance of dying before reaching their fifth birthday. Although these are preventable, they can’t get treatment because there is no functioning or affordable healthcare.
An Afghan woman is 225 times more likely to die in childbirth than a woman in the UK. Most children can’t read because most schools don’t function.
Photogallery
In the space of nine months more than 100 malnourished children were admitted to Save the Children’s malnutrition clinic in Aqchar District Hospital, Mazar-i-Sharif, in Northern Afghanistan. A further 1600 children were treated across the district.
Hanifa waits with her children Sora and Zaineb for food rations at the nutrition clinic in Aqcha District Hospital, near Mazar-i-Sharif. Most of the families who bring their children to the clinic are struggling to survive on (US) $2 a day.
Basira and her family sit around their meagre lunch, which consists of tea and three loaves of bread for 13 people.
Basira, 13, (pictured in the blue headscarf) and her sisters provide the family’s only income pleating chadors at home because their father is ill and not able to work.
Basira and other street children go to school and learn for two hours each day at a Save the Children’s Working Street Children Centre in Mazar-i-Sharif. “I love coming here [to the centre] very much and studying very hard,” she says. “I hope to become a doctor in the future.”
Sharifa (right) helped Seema, 35, and her baby when she was in labour by advising her to go to hospital for her baby’s delivery. Sharifa has been a Save the Children Community Health Worker in her home village of Mazar-e-Sharif for three years. Some 170 families live in the village and she normally treats 5 or 6 children a week. Seema says, “If Sharifa hadn’t have helped me – God forbid – I would have died and my baby would have died.”
In July 2004 Save the Children set up a midwife training college in Mazar-i-Sharif, northern Afghanistan. Since then, some 77 women have graduated from the Save the Children midwife training college in Mazar-i-Sharif and have returned to their home villages or towns to work as midwives. They have helped deliver more than 50,000 babies and keep their mothers healthy.
With your support ...
We can scale up our response in the country, and begin working in Balkh, an area in the north-west of the country, which was known historically as Bactria.
While not directly affected by the current conflict, children and their families here live in appalling conditions. Like more than half the children in the country, children in this area are stunted and underweight.
We will:
- identify and treat children who are malnourished. Watch this video we produced for the Guardian to see how we're battling malnutrition in the country.
- provide essentials, such as medicines, first aid equipment, food, soap and blankets to families who need them
- provide safe drinking water for families and health clinics
- get children learning by rehabilitating schools, training teachers and establishing classes for children not in mainstream schooling – such as girls or children with disabilities.
How you can help
This appeal has now closed. Thank you to everyone who supported it. You’ve helped us change lives. You can still help children across the world – please continue to support our Children's Emergency Fund.
Find out more about our work in Afghanistan
Find out what we're calling for. Read our policy brief: A child survival emergency — refocusing Britain’s objectives in Afghanistan