KABUL, 7 April (IRIN) - On Monday - World Health Day - Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed deep concern for millions of women and children being threatened by increasing rates of maternal and infant mortality in his war-ravaged country. "Afghanistan's need for health services is deeper than any other country's," the president said while addressing a ceremony at the health ministry in the capital, Kabul. He said the average life expectancy in Afghanistan was 45 years, which was indicative of how severe poverty remained for the majority.
Karzai's speech followed a warning from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) a day earlier. "Afghanistan ranks as the fourth-worst country in the world in terms of under-five mortality, with one in four children not surviving beyond their fifth birthdays," a spokesman for UNICEF, Edward Carwardine, told IRIN in Kabul. "The infant mortality rate is at 165 per 1,000 live births, while Afghanistan's maternal mortality ratio is equally alarming at 1,600 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births."
While UNICEF points to a number of factors continuing to impact on the health of the country's women and children, it noted that the major causes of child mortality included diarrhoea, acute respiratory infection, malaria and micronutrient deficiencies.
Chronic malnutrition remains widespread. "A survey conducted in Badghis Province [in western Afghanistan] in 2002 showed a 58 percent prevalence of chronic malnutrition and 7 percent of acute malnutrition among children under five years of age," Cawardine said, adding that iodine deficiency was common in women, resulting in low birth weight, deafness and cretinism among the newborn.
UNICEF further declares that poor complementary feeding and breast-feeding practices, and lack of nutrient-dense complementary foods are important factors leading to the high prevalence of chronic malnutrition.
Moreover, according to Dr Abdullah Abed, a medical information officer with the US-based International Medical Corps in Kabul, many preventable health problems were afflicting the population. "Long-standing problems which cause disability rather than earlier death are much bigger problems here in Afghanistan," Abed said, pointing to a very high rate of tuberculosis, which remains a great health concern among Afghans.
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