UN Report: 1 in 3 Young Children in Afghanistan Suffer Acute Malnourishment

All the aid's not helping

Around a third of young children in southern Afghanistan are acutely malnourished, with a level of deprivation similar to that found in faminezones, a government survey has found, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid that has been poured into the region.

Around a million Afghans under five are acutely malnourished, according to the UN-backed survey. By far the worst affected area is the southern region – centred around Kandahar and Helmand – that was the Taliban's birthplace and has seen some of the heaviest fighting of the decade-long war.