As winter looms, Afghan aid groups plead for help
For 20 years aid from donors propped up the health care system
Thousands of health care facilities have run out of essential medicines. Afghan doctors have not been paid in two months, with no paychecks in sight. And in recent weeks, there has been a surge of cases of measles and diarrhoea, according to the World Health Organisation.
For two decades, aid from the World Bank and other international donors propped up the country’s health care system, but after the Taliban seized power, they froze $600 million in health care aid. “We are deeply concerned that Afghanistan faces imminent collapse of health services and worsening hunger if aid and money do not flow into the country within weeks,” Alexander Matheou, Asia Pacific director of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said at a news conference Thursday. “Afghanistan’s looming harsh winter threatens greater misery and hardships.”
The unfolding health care crisis has underscored how quickly basic services have unravelled as international donors struggle with how to dispense badly needed aid to the country under Taliban rule.
Brutal repression
Foreign aid once made up nearly 75 per cent of the country’s public expenditures, according to the World Bank, but after the militants seized control on August 15, the US froze over $9 billion in the Afghan Central Bank’s American accounts, and major international funders like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund paused disbursements. They fear that the Taliban will reimpose the brutal repression of their first reign, from 1996 to 2001.