GENEVA: Fuelled by drastic aid cuts, child malnutrition is reaching critical levels in Afghanistan, with the number of children being rushed to health centres soaring, the United Nations warned on Tuesday.

John Aylieff, the Afghanistan country director for the UN’s World Food Programme, painted a bleak picture of fully preventable deaths and acutely malnourished children being turned away without assistance.

The country’s nutrition crisis “is spinning out of control”, he told reporters in Geneva.

“It’s a crisis which is getting worse by the day, and tragically one which we are unable to contain,” he said, speaking from Kabul.

“Child wasting, the deadliest form of malnutrition, has reached critical levels in one third of the country’s provinces now.” He said conflict, trade disruptions, returns from neighbouring countries and dramatic aid cuts were driving unprecedented levels of acute malnutrition.

Last year saw the highest year-on-year surge in malnutrition and this year, the situation is “even worse”, he said.

“The number of children being rushed to health centres is soaring” but “too many of them are arriving too late to be saved”. Children aged under two make up 80 percent of the worst cases.

Aylieff said WFP only had sufficient funds this year to feed just one in seven malnourished women and children.

“We are turning away six out of seven and we’re turning them away empty-handed, with absolutely nothing,” he said.

Feeble cries of malnourished babies haunt the health clinics of Afghanistan.

“This crisis could eclipse all previous projections and condemn countless more children and mothers to preventable death,” he added.

Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2026