WHO warns over 10% of Afghans could lose healthcare by year-end: Video

More than 10 percent of the Afghan population could be deprived of healthcare by the end of the year due to the termination of US aid, the World Health Organisation warned on April 15.

Afghanistan, with a population of 45 million that has long been dependent on aid, faces the world's second-largest humanitarian crisis. Since US funding cuts earlier this year, about three million people have lost access to health services because of the closure of more than 364 medical centres, with a further 220 centres at risk of closing by the third quarter of 2025, the UN's health agency said.

"That's maybe another two or three million people who have no access to healthcare services," Edwin Ceniza Salvador, the WHO representative in Afghanistan, told AFP in an interview in Kabul. "When the funding stopped, of course, the existing donors tried to step up. But you're talking about a significant gap to US funding," Salvador added.

Afghanistan's ramshackle healthcare system has been weakened by decades of war and records some of the world's highest infant and maternal mortality rates. The global aid situation has grown dire since President Donald Trump ordered the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development early this year and began Washington's withdrawal from the WHO. His administration scrapped 83 percent of humanitarian programmes funded by USAID.