ISLAMABAD, Oct 4: World Health Organisation (WHO) is facing acute funding shortage for health activities in Afghanistan, where outbreak of cerebral malaria, cholera and diarrhoea is feared.

According to the WHO’s Emergency and Humanitarian Action Department, the world health body’s appeal for donations for health activities in Afghanistan has been funded by less than 10 per cent where the emergency health task force is on high alert to combat outbreak of diseases.

Funds are desperately short to meet the requirements, The department said.

The combination of cold, increasing malnutrition, overcrowding in refugee camps, drought, fighting and United Nations evacuation could have a devastating impact for the affected population, it added.

According to WHO officials, the organization is turning its attention to respiratory tract infections as the next major threat to health, especially for children, many of whom are under nourished and have lowered resistance.

“In such overcrowded and impoverished conditions, what starts out as a common cold can become a killer,” they said.

The same conditions also increase the risk of tuberculosis, particularly among women, who are often confined, a WHO official said.

Meanwhile, speaking at a press conference here on Wednesday, UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan spokesperson, Stephanie Bunker, said that the World Health Organisation officials had expressed concern about outbreak of a deadly malarial epidemic in eastern and north-eastern Afghanistan.

She said the type of malarial epidemic feared in Afghanistan was considered one of the most dangerous types of the mosquito-transmitted diseases ,which could lead to cerebral malaria.

The rural health clinics in eastern and southern regions were facing increased pressure of patients due to internal displacement of the Afghan population, she said.

About relief operations, she said that redeployment of UN staff in the neighbouring countries of Afghanistan had started and seven UN staff members in Peshawar, six in Quetta, nine in Turkmenistan, eight in Iran and three in Tajikistan were expected to be deployed to coordinate activities in different parts of Afghanistan.

In response to a question about plans for surgical strikes on Afghanistan’s airports to open them for allowing the United Nations (UN) flights to airlift relief goods, the spokesperson denied any knowledge of the plans.

However, she said, the UN flight operations to Afghanistan remained suspended.