War-stricken Afghan children brave the chilling cold

KABUL, December 13 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – In Afghanistan, where the U.S. war has killed and displaced thousands of people, refugee children have been dying of hunger and cold.

In the latest wave, 10 children have died in a refugee camp, nine of them babies under the age of two, BBC News Online reported.

The children died when temperatures unexpectedly dropped to -15C, in a part of Afghanistan where it is rarely so cold.

A health consultant who interviewed the families of the dead children said they had not been ill before that night but had simply died of cold, said BBC.

There are as many as 400,000 Afghans living in refugee camps close to the border with Pakistan.

The United Nations, which is reportedly conducting an urgent review of winter aid for Afghanistan, is delivering 160,000 blankets to families living in camps for displaced people, around the south-eastern town of Spinboldak, BBC added.

The United Nations has already distributed tents, blankets and plastic sheeting to more than two million Afghans to try to help them survive the harsh winter.

But demand is outstripping supply.

A senior U.N. official in Kabul, Nigel Fisher, told BBC a quick review is now underway together with the Afghan government to ascertain exactly what more is needed.

And then he predicted donors would be called upon to give more aid to get the country through what is promising to be another harsh winter.

Earlier, a top Afghan health official has urged the international community not to abandon war-ravaged Afghanistan as attention is diverted to a possible U.S. war against sanction-hit Iraq.

"We are asking the world to not forget us if there's something that happens in Iraq or the attention of the world goes to Iraq, or anything else," Ferozudeen Feroz, Afghanistan's deputy minister of public health, said Monday, December 9, to a handful of government officials, nongovernmental organization representatives and reporters in Washington.

"We don't want to be forgotten again," he added, quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

With the help of an internationally funded study, Afghanistan's health ministry has pinpointed priorities for overhauling a nationwide health care system in dire need of improvement, with better health care for women and children topping its list.

The rate of mothers dying in childbirth is "the highest of any country in the world," resulting in some 1,600 deaths for every 100,000 live births, Feroz said, adding that only 25 percent of Afghan health care facilities offer basic services for expectant mothers and children.

More than 25 percent of Afghan children die before their fifth birthday, while more than half of all child deaths are the result of vaccine-preventable diseases and common diarrheal and respiratory infections, he said, citing a survey funded by the European Commission, U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.N.  Population Fund and Japan's International Cooperation Agency.

The preliminary results of the survey, conducted between June and September, were released Monday.

Of the 1,038 health facilities surveyed, one-third were found to have been damaged by war.

Only two-thirds of the 756 basic primary health services facilities had toilets for staff and patients, and just under half had safe drinking water, according to the study.

But Feroz said that the damage transcends structural degradation, spilling over to poor morale, education and readiness.

One in every 10 Afghan children is severely malnourished, and one in every 4 children dies before age five

Arresting the spread of communicable diseases like tuberculosis – which is "rampant" in Afghanistan – is another priority, Feroz said in his native Dari, speaking through a translator after delivering a short speech in English.

Women alone account for some 60 percent of tuberculosis fatalities in the country.

And equitable distribution of health care – which Feroz views as central to peace and stability – is another necessity.

On average, there is one basic primary health services facility for every 27,000 people, but some facilities serve as many as 300,000 people, he said.

"A nation cannot be secure and it cannot rebuild the nation's infrastructure when the health of its families is in grave danger," Feroz said, stressing that "aid in the health sector – more than any other sector – is aid toward peace in Afghanistan."