The Afghanistan malnutrition crisis has reached a scale the country has not seen in years. Nearly 19 million people, close to 40% of the population, face acute hunger in the coming months. The World Food Programme issued the warning through its Afghanistan country director, John Aylieff. He spoke on 16 October during a visit to Kabul’s Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health. About 5.3 million women and children will need treatment for acute malnutrition over the next year. That figure marks a rise of 1.3 million compared with 2022, when the caseload stood at around 4 million.
Funding for the response has collapsed even as needs have grown sharply. WFP now holds just 12% of the money it had available in 2022, an 88% drop in real terms. Staff are turning away six of every seven acutely malnourished women and children who reach WFP-supported clinics. Staple food prices have climbed between 10% and 30% over the same period. Families already stretched thin are finding meals harder to afford each month. An August release from WFP described malnutrition as critical across 12 Afghan provinces. It projected 3.7 million children would be acutely malnourished this year. The agency has closed 142 health centres since then. It has appealed for $540 million to keep its remaining services running.
Several factors have combined to deepen the Afghanistan malnutrition crisis. Afghanistan-Pakistan border crossings remained closed for a full year. The closure disrupted trade routes that normally carry food and goods into the country. More than 5 million Afghan refugees have been forced to return from Iran and Pakistan since 2023. Many arrived in communities that were already short of food and services. Natural disasters have compounded the pressure on an already fragile system. The wider Middle East crisis has drawn global attention and donor funding away from Afghanistan. Together, these pressures have pushed millions of additional people toward hunger within a single year.
Clinics turn away most cases
At the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health, the human cost is visible on every ward. Malika, 25, lost her five-year-old daughter Khadija to malnutrition months ago. She now fears for her three-year-old child. Her husband works as a day labourer, earning between $3 and $4.60 on the days he finds work. Fatma, a two-year-old patient, weighs just 4.8 kilograms, about half the roughly 9.6 kilograms expected for a healthy child her age. Her family borrowed money to travel to Kabul for treatment. Many malnourished families across the country cannot afford that journey at all.
The hospital’s malnutrition ward has only 20 beds for a growing caseload. It is now full, and some cots hold two children at once. Dr Mohammad Arif Hassanzai, who heads the hospital, says the ward could treat between 60 and 100 patients with adequate resources. Fatma’s case reflects that same pressure, in a ward built for a far smaller caseload. Dr Hassanzai argues that politics should not determine who receives care. “Healthcare should always remain separate from politics,” he said.
A funding gap set to widen
Aylieff said WFP is “forced to turn away six out of seven acutely malnourished women and children” who arrive seeking help. The gap between need and capacity keeps widening as funding falls further behind. Clinics across Afghanistan face the same arithmetic as the Kabul hospital. Demand keeps rising while resources shrink. Without new funding, the Afghanistan malnutrition crisis is likely to deepen through the winter months. Food access typically grows harder across the country once the cold sets in. For families such as Malika’s, the shortfall means another season without any guarantee of treatment. Food security pressures are not confined to South Asia. In Southeast Asia, Indonesia’s targeted food aid has reached a shrinking share of poor households, even as other state spending on nutrition expands.
