Five million women and children in Afghanistan are projected to face acute malnutrition over the next year, with nearly four million children expected to require treatment, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned Friday.

In an interview with AFP News Agency, John Aylieff, WFP’s country director, said the crisis is worsening as funding shortages force clinics providing malnutrition treatment to scale back or close, leaving vulnerable families without essential support.

“In the next 12 months, five million women and children in this country will experience acute malnutrition, the life-threatening type of malnutrition,” Aylieff said, calling the figures “staggering” in a country of more than 40 million people.

He warned that untreated malnutrition could be fatal for children, noting that some families travel for hours to reach clinics only to be turned away due to lack of funds. “If we can’t treat children with malnutrition, those children are going to die. Clinics treating children with malnutrition are closing down,” he said.

Aylieff added that women are increasingly sacrificing their own health to feed their children, and WFP is receiving a growing number of distress calls, including from women in extreme desperation.

“This is very harrowing,” he added.

Afghanistan faces one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, driven by economic collapse, climate-related shocks, displacement, and funding shortfalls that limited access to food, healthcare, and basic services.