One in 10 infants and very young children in Afghanistan is now suffering from acute malnutrition, according to new research published Thursday by Save the Children, which cited UN figures showing the condition now affects 3.7 million children under five — a 14 percent increase over the past four years.
One in 10 Afghan infants acutely malnourished as aid funding falls sharply, Save the Children says
One in 10 infants and very young children in Afghanistan is now suffering from acute malnutrition, according to new research published Thursday by Save the Children, which cited UN figures showing the condition now affects 3.7 million children under five — a 14 percent increase over the past four years.
Acute malnutrition, also described as wasting, is a condition in which a child is dangerously underweight for their height, caused by a sharp drop in food intake or severe illness that leads the body to rapidly lose fat and muscle.
Save the Children said levels of acute malnutrition worsened in two-thirds of Afghan provinces in the second quarter of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, and that the proportion of children affected is rising rather than stabilising.
The agency attributed the increase largely to a reduction in humanitarian aid that has forced approximately 600 essential healthcare facilities to close. About 4 million people — roughly half of them children — had previously relied on those facilities, according to Save the Children.
Humanitarian aid for Afghanistan has fallen by almost 70 percent over the past four years, dropping from $3.27bn in 2022 to $1bn in 2025. More than halfway through 2026, only $438m in humanitarian aid had been secured, representing a 74 percent funding gap, the agency said.
Save the Children said it has kept 14 health clinics open and described itself as the only organisation providing healthcare to 10,000 people in mountainous areas of northern Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's population has grown by 12 percent since September 2023, largely because more than six million Afghans have been returned from Pakistan and Iran after both countries tightened conditions for Afghan refugees and accelerated deportations, according to the agency.
Aid flows declined sharply after the Taliban returned to power in August 2021 following the withdrawal of US forces and the collapse of President Ashraf Ghani's government. Many international donors limited or redirected funding, tightened sanctions, and imposed stricter conditions on aid operations in response.
The Taliban's ban on female humanitarian staff has further restricted agencies' ability to deliver services to women and children, according to Save the Children.
Before 2021, the United States was Afghanistan's largest aid donor, financing major development and reconstruction projects. Since the Taliban's takeover, most US aid has flowed through indirect channels such as the UN or NGOs and amounts to a fraction of pre-2021 levels. The US also expanded sanctions on senior Taliban figures and froze Afghan state assets held in the United States.
The Trump administration has additionally cut foreign aid broadly since President Donald Trump began his second term. The European Union and World Bank, according to experts cited in the source, halted large-scale reconstruction funding after the Taliban takeover and have since restarted smaller emergency-style programmes channelled through NGOs.
- No response or statement from the Taliban administration is included in the source.
- No response from the US government, the Trump administration, the EU, or the World Bank is included.
- The source does not specify which UN dataset or report the malnutrition figures are drawn from.
- The source does not break down acute malnutrition rates by age group within the under-five category.
- The source does not detail what conditions the EU or World Bank have attached to their resumed smaller-scale programmes.
- The source does not specify which provinces recorded the worsening malnutrition rates in the second quarter of 2026.
Read the original at Al Jazeera English