1.1 million kids face starvation in Afghanistan
In Afghanistan, 1.1 million children under the age of 5 will likely face the most severe form of malnutrition this year, according to the U.N., as increasing numbers of hungry, wasting-away children are brought into hospital wards.
U.N. and other aid agencies were able to stave off outright famine after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last year, rolling out a massive emergency aid program that fed millions.
But they are struggling to keep pace with relentlessly worsening conditions. Poverty is spiraling and making more Afghans in need of aid, global food prices are mounting from the war in Ukraine and promises of international funding so far are not coming through, according to an assessment report issued this month.
UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, said 1.1 million children this year are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition, also known as severe wasting, nearly double the number in 2018 and up from just under 1 million last year.
Severe wasting is the most lethal type of malnutrition, in which food is so lacking that a child’s immune system is compromised, according to UNICEF. They become vulnerable to multiple bouts of disease and eventually they become so weak they can’t absorb nutrients.
Hit by one of its worst droughts in decades and torn by years of war, Afghanistan was already facing a hunger emergency; but the Taliban takeover in August threw the country into crisis. Many development agencies pulled out and international sanctions cut off billions in finances for the government, collapsing the economy.
Millions were plunged into poverty, struggling to afford food for their families. By the end of last year, half the population of around 38 million lived under the poverty line, according to U.N. figures.
U.N. agencies launched a massive, accelerated aid program after the Taliban takeover, ramping up to a point that they now deliver food assistance to 38% of the population.
The number of people facing acute food insecurity fell slightly from 22.8 million late last year to 19.7 million currently, according to a May report by IPC, a partnership among U.N. and other agencies that assesses food security.
Blast at mosque, car bombs kill 15
A series of explosions shook Afghanistan on Wednesday, the Taliban said, including a blast inside a mosque in the capital of Kabul that killed at least five worshipers and three bombings of minivans in the country’s north that killed nine passengers.
The Islamic State group’s local affiliate claimed responsibility for the minivan bombings.
The Kabul Emergency Hospital said it received 22 victims of the mosque bombing, including five dead. There were no further details on the blast that struck the Hazrat Zakaria
Mosque in the city’s central Police District 4, according to Khalid Zadran, a Taliban police spokesperson in Kabul.
The minivans were targeted in the northern city of Mazare-Sharif after explosive devices were placed inside the vehicles, according to Mohammad Asif Waziri, a Taliban-appointed spokesperson in Balkh province. He said the explosions killed nine and wounded 15.
2nd baby formula shipment arrives
Jill Biden and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy welcomed the delivery Wednesday of a second shipment of tens of thousands of pounds of baby formula that the Biden administration is importing from Europe to ease critical supply shortages in the U.S.
The first lady and the nation’s doctor each sought to empathize with anxious parents nationwide who have been scrambling to find enough
formula for their children.
Both said President Biden and his team understand what parents are going through and were working hard to solve the latest domestic crisis to challenge the administration. Biden has come under growing political pressure for not acting more quickly to try to head off the supply crisis.
Biden and Murthy spoke on the tarmac at Dulles International Airport in Virginia in front of a FedEx Express plane that had just delivered 120,000 pounds, or 60 tons, of infant formula from Ramstein Air Base in Germany under the administration’s Operation Fly Formula program.
With Wednesday’s delivery and a shipment of 78,000 pounds of specialty infant formula that was flown by military aircraft to Indianapolis over the weekend, “We now have brought the equivalent of 1.5 million eight-ounce bottles of infant formula to the United States,” Murthy said.
More deliveries are scheduled
to arrive soon. The administration has cut the time frame for deliveries to three days, down from up to four weeks, he said.
Settlement in opioid case
Attorneys for the state of West Virginia and two remaining pharmaceutical manufacturers have reached a tentative $161.5 million settlement just as closing arguments were set to begin in a seven-week trial over the opioid epidemic, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said Wednesday.
Morrisey announced the development in court in the state’s lawsuit against Teva Pharmaceuticals Inc., AbbVie’s Allergan and their family of companies. The judge agreed to put the trial on hold to give the parties the opportunity to work out a full settlement agreement in the upcoming weeks.