Afghans facing health catastrophe as Taliban squander foreign aid
THE World Bank is unlikely to resume direct aid to Afghanistan’s collapsing health sector, officials have said, as doctors warned illiterate Taliban administrators are worsening the crisis by focusing on issues such as covering up female staff.
Funds from the Washington-based lender were crucial in transforming Afghanistan’s health care system over the past 20 years, with benchmarks in infant and maternal mortality improving sharply.
But the sudden loss of international money following the Taliban’s takeover in August has pitched the aid-dependent country into freefall.
By winter, the head of the World Food Programme warned this week, it could be “hell on Earth”.
World Bank allocations funded more than three-fifths of Afghanistan’s 3,800 hospitals and clinics. David Malpass, the bank’s head, has suggested the direct aid tap is unlikely to be turned back on. “I would not envision us operating inside given the full breakdown” of the economy, he said in a conversation at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
“One of the challenges is the payment system,” he added, noting that “there’s not the ability to have money actually flow, given what the current government is doing.”
His speech came amid reports that wards in Afghan hospitals are overwhelmed with malnourished babies.
Many weakened children have died after having to share beds and catching infections, PBS reported. In footage from one Kabul hospital, children with bloated bellies and wasted limbs – some barely able to breathe – are shown crowded into cots. Children there are starving because their parents are too poor to feed them, according to PBS.
Foreign money paid for three-quarters of the Afghan government budget under Ashraf Ghani’s ousted regime and aid amounted to around two-fifths of economic output. Around $9billion (£6.6billion) in Afghanistan’s foreign reserves has been frozen to stop it falling into Taliban hands.
The Taliban have demanded the unfreezing of the national reserves and the resumption of aid, but diplomats say much of the international community is hardening against it. The regime has gone back on assurances to allow girls’ education and install an inclusive government.
Taliban officials and fighters have been appointed to oversee hospitals and clinics, but their lack of expertise and education is worsening the crisis, health staff complain.
Staff alleged new administrators appeared more intent on enforcing a separation of male and female employees or discussing points of religion than running a health system.
One Kabul doctor, who only gave her name as Mina, said: “The Taliban do not know anything and have zero knowledge about health or how this works. There is a catastrophic crisis and the world doesn’t know.”