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

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 Organization warned Tuesday.

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 would mean more than half of the 1,068 centres across the country would be closed, Edwin Ceniza Salvador, the WHO representative in Afghanistan, told AFP in an interview.

"That's maybe another two or three million people who have no access to healthcare services," Salvador said 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," he added.

Afghanistan's dilapidated 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 to begin Washington's withdrawal from the WHO.

His administration scrapped 83 percent of humanitarian programmes funded by USAID. The agency had an annual budget of $42.8 billion, representing 42 percent of total global humanitarian aid. AFP