Dr Richard Brennan, the WHO emergency director in the region, said: “While the eyes of the world now are on the people being evacuated and the planes leaving, we need to get supplies in to help those who are left behind.”
UN agencies have warned of food shortages in Afghanistan as early as September.
It has already emerged first aid supplies, including surgical equipment and severe malnutrition kits, were stuck due to restrictions at Kabul airport. The World Health Organization (WHO) said the closure of the airport to commercial flights has held up key deliveries.
The World Food Programme (WFP), which brings in supplies by road, said it was getting food through four different supply routes for the moment, but could start running out of food by next month. Andrew Patterson, the WFP’s deputy country director in Afghanistan, said they were transporting food through humanitarian crossings, including from Uzbekistan, though 50% of supplies arrived, as well as via Pakistan and Turkmenistan.
“Winter is coming. We are going into the lean season and many Afghan roads will be covered in snow. We need to get the food into our warehouses where it needs to be distributed,” said Patterson. “We’ve got 20,000 metric tonnes of food in the country now, we’ve got 7,000 metric tonnes on the way." He pointed out that, “We need another 54,000 metric tonnes of food to get the Afghan people through to the end of December. We could start running out of food by September.”
The WFP needed $200m (£146m) to buy food for up to 20 million people who they predict will need it. Nearly 18.5 million people – half the population – already rely on aid, and the current drought is expected to exacerbate that.
Henrietta Fore, the executive director of Unicef, said that about 10 million children across Afghanistan need humanitarian assistance, 1 million could die without treatment and that conditions are expected to deteriorate further.
Even before the Taliban seized power, the country was in great humanitarian need following the second drought in three years. At the beginning of 2021, a third of the country’s population was facing crisis and emergency levels of food insecurity, and half of all children under five were malnourished. 40% of Afghanistan’s crops were lost to drought this year and the socioeconomic impact of Covid has left essential food out of reach for many families. Wheat prices are 24% above the five-year average.
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