You can see, feel, hear the distress in Badakhshan’s Provincial Hospital in Afghanistan.

Warning: This article contains content some readers may find distressing.

The halls are heavy with the sound of crying babies. The rooms, full of malnourished children, many two to a bed. Their frail, fragile bodies expose their wasting bones, with some so weak they’re dependent on oxygen tanks to breathe.

Afghanistan is facing an unprecedented crisis of hunger. More than 4.7 million women and children require urgent treatment for malnutrition, according to the UN. And 90% of children under the age of five are in food poverty.

The hospital team in Badakhshan, in the northeast of the country, are doing all they can to keep the children alive. But increasing numbers are dying.

In the last three months alone, roughly one baby died every three days here. Fifty-three have passed away so far this year – that’s a 50% increase on the same time last year.

Faisal is 12 months old. He’s severely malnourished and has acute diarrhoea too. But like many on this ward, he has other serious complications.

Among these is hydrocephalus, a condition that causes water to gather around his brain. His poor mother is so exhausted, she’s lying on the floor by his bed.

As she sits down to speak with us, she reveals she has already lost three children to malnutrition.

“I am worried about him and what might come next,” she tells me.

“I’ve already lost three of my children. My first daughter died at eight years old. Two more of my children passed away when they were two-and-a-half years old.”

The ward is full of lost-looking eyes, dimmed by hunger.

A horrifying thing to watch

Asma is 13 months old. But she weighs little over nine pounds (4kg) – less than half of what she should.

Doctors fear she might not survive the night. But she’s put on oxygen and by the morning, she thankfully starts to improve.

“I’m really afraid,” her mother Khadijah says as her eyes fill.

“Of course I’m afraid, I’ve cried so much. I’m so thankful to the doctors, they’ve kept my baby alive. I’m so grateful to them,” she says.

But it’s touch and go for her daughter, and there are long periods when her chest fails to rise and fall.

It’s a horrifying thing to watch – imagine as a parent sitting day and night, wondering whether the next breath might be her last.

There is a stream of desperate cases coming through the doors here.

Today, there are 20 babies to just 12 beds. Sometimes, it is even more crowded.

There are suddenly two new arrivals. One of them, little Masouda. Her family travelled 13 hours to get here – spending what little they had left.

She, too, has to be quickly placed on oxygen and she’s painfully thin. Doctors tell us they fear she won’t make it.

The team are doing an incredible job during a hugely demanding time. But they need more staff, more medicine, more equipment.

Hospitals and health clinics across Afghanistan have suffered major funding cuts. The US, which was Afghanistan’s biggest aid donor, this year pulled almost all of its funding to the country. And the Taliban’s restrictions on women and girls have proved a major barrier for many international donors.

It’s having a direct impact on children’s chances of survival.

Daniel Timme, chief of communication at UNICEF, said: “The nutrition situation for children in Afghanistan is very serious and the numbers speak for themselves. Over 3.5 million children under five are acutely malnourished, including 1.4 million suffering life-threatening forms of wasting.

“It must be clear to everyone: when funding drops as we are seeing it now in a context with such high levels of malnutrition, preventable child deaths rise.”

A vital lifeline

In rural areas, poverty is as extreme as the landscape, and help for families with malnourished children is getting harder to reach.

Layaba Health Clinic is a vital lifeline.

The waiting room is full of mothers looking for medical assistance for their babies. Some women here tell us the Taliban’s restrictions on them working and earning money have also played a part, making it harder for them to feed their families.

“They are to blame,” one woman says with surprising candor.

“Every girl had her own dreams. I wanted to be a doctor. I took my responsibility for my children seriously. And I wanted to support my husband too.”

Another woman tells us she earned more than her husband as a teacher, but now finds herself unable to contribute financially.

The Taliban’s response

In an exclusive interview with Sky News, the Taliban’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the malnutrition crisis was the product of decades of conflict.

“We have had to start from zero to rebuild and restore our national resources. The Islamic Emirate is making every possible effort to address these challenges.”

Mr Mujahid said his government had a five-year plan to “tackle malnutrition, unemployment, and other pressing social issues”.

In response to the complaints of the women we spoke to, he said that men in the “vast majority” of Afghan families were the breadwinners and claimed the Islamic Emirate had made “significant efforts to promote vocational opportunities for women”.

But under the Taliban, women can no longer train to be doctors, nurses and midwives. And in remote villages, community workers like Harira are often the only lifeline – a project part-funded by UNICEF.

She goes door-to-door carrying baby scales, carrying out check-ups, trying to teach families about what to feed their children and when needed, get them to clinics and hospitals for treatment.

It saved Ramzia’s son’s life.

She had measles when she was pregnant and her son Faisal was very underweight.

“His legs and hands were as small as my fingers. Now he’s much better,” Harira says – beaming as she delights in the weight he has now put on.

“I was afraid I’d lose him,” Ramzia says. “He was so weak. But Harira came here and taught me how to feed him and give him milk when he needed it.”

Read more:
Families fear months ahead after earthquake wiped out entire villages
Taliban internet blackout has created an extreme scenario

Reeling from death, fighting for life

Keeping children alive in this climate is a battle.

Nasrullah and Jamilah, who live on the outskirts of Fayzabad, are holding their two-month-old twins.

But they’re also in the throes of grief – on a journey to the grave of the baby they lost only a month ago. Her name was Shukriya. She was 18 months old.

“She was our child, we loved her. I will never forget her, so long as I’m alive. We really tried, we went to the doctors for check-ups, for ultrasounds, for blood work – we tried our very best. But none of it could save her.”

Both parents say they feared their twins could also face the same fate. Shukriya’s grave is covered with one of her babygrows. It is haunting to see. And there are other little graves next to hers.

Deaths aren’t documented in a lot of these communities. But locals tell us more and more children are dying because of malnutrition. A silent, searing loss that is spreading.

A shake-up to the house-buying system which could cut a month off the time it takes – and slash around £700 from the moving bill – is on the table.

Changes could include requiring property sellers and estate agents to provide more information when a home is listed for sale, reducing the need for buyers to carry out searches and surveys.

Binding contracts could also be introduced at an earlier stage, reducing the risk of a chain collapsing.

The proposals could also deliver clearer information to consumers about estate agents and conveyancers, including their track record and expertise, along with new mandatory qualifications and a code of practice to drive up standards.

Housing Secretary Steve Reed said the proposals, which are the subject of a consultation, would help make “a simple dream, a simple reality”.

The government says it will set out a full roadmap in the new year after consulting on its proposals.

Mr Reed said: “Buying a home should be a dream, not a nightmare.

“Our reforms will fix the broken system so hardworking people can focus on the next chapter of their lives.”

Officials believe the proposed package of reforms could cut around a month off the time it takes to buy a new home and save first-time buyers an average of £710.

People selling a home could face increased costs of around £310 due to the inclusion of upfront assessments and surveys.

Those in the middle of a chain would potentially gain a net saving of £400 as a result of the increased costs from selling being outweighed by lower buying expenses.

Wider use of online processes, including digital ID, could help make transactions smoother, the government argued, pointing to the Finnish digital real estate system which can see the process completed in around two weeks.

The consultation also draws on other jurisdictions, including the Scottish system where there is more upfront information and earlier binding contracts.

‘Process the same as for our grandparents’

The planned shake-up was welcomed by property websites and lenders.

Rightmove chief executive Johan Svanstrom said: “The home-moving process involves many fragmented parts, and there’s simply too much uncertainty and costs along the way.

“Speed, connected data and stakeholder simplicity should be key goals. We believe it’s important to listen to agents as the experts for what practical changes will be most effective, and we look forward to working with the government on this effort to improve the buying and selling process.”

Santander’s head of homes David Morris said: “At a time when technology has changed many processes in our lives, it is incredible that the process of buying a home – an activity that is a cornerstone of our economy – remains much the same for today’s buyers as it did for their grandparents.”

Conservative shadow housing minister Paul Holmes said that while Labour welcomed steps to digitise and speed up the process, the party risked “reinventing the last Labour government’s failed Home Information Packs – which reduced the number of homes put on sale, and duplicated costs across buyers and sellers”.

The Tories will pledge to make even further cuts to the foreign aid budget, as the party attempts to regain its reputation for fiscal responsibility in the wake of the Truss mini-budget.

Shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride will unveil plans to cut overseas development aid to 0.1% of Gross National Income (GNI), down from the current 0.3%, cementing a sea change in the Conservative Party’s position on international aid.

In his keynote speech to the party conference in Manchester, Sir Mel will claim that his plans can save £47bn over the next parliament, which include cuts to welfare, the civil service, and green subsidies.

In the wake of the Truss mini-budget that saw the pound fall and interest rates soar, the senior MP will say that his party will “never, ever make fiscal commitments without spelling out exactly how they will be paid for”, and commit to fiscal responsibility.

A key part of Sir Mel’s plans to demonstrate that is to reduce foreign aid to 0.1% of GNI, or around £3bn per year – down from spending of an estimated £9.4bn in 2028-29.

The Boris Johnson government reduced aid spending to 0.5% of GNI in 2021, in order to pay for the vast public spending during the pandemic. Sir Keir Starmer announced a further cut to 0.3% of GNI earlier this year to pay for the increase in defence spending.

Bond, the network for organisations working in international development and humanitarian assistance, has hit out at the announcement, describing it as “reckless, short-sighted, and morally indefensible”.

Its chief executive, Romilly Greenhill, told Conservatives at a fringe event at the Tory Party conference on Sunday: “Let’s just be really clear, such a policy would negatively impact millions of people around the world.

“It would harm deeply vital programmes being made in reducing, eradicating, killer diseases, and it would also severely undermine our ability to respond to devastating global crises.”

But the Tories say they “cannot justify taxing people in this country to pay for billions of spending abroad”, and it marks the death-knell of Tory former prime minister David Cameron’s target of spending 0.7% of GNI on aid, announced in 2011.

Welfare, green subsidies, and asylum hotels to face the chop

Another key area where Sir Mel will pledge to make savings will be the welfare system, where they claim £23bn can be cut.

He will say that narrowing the eligibility for sickness benefits, stopping claims from people with “low-level mental health problems” who could be treated instead, limiting the VAT subsidy for Motability, and reforming job-seeking obligations are key areas where savings can be made.

But a major change will be restricting welfare to British citizens – bringing Tory party policy in line with Reform UK.

But he will vow to reverse any decision from the current Labour government to lift the two-child benefit cap, which stands in contrast with Nigel Farage’s party that wants to lift it.

Sir Mel is expected to say the reforms are essential not just for balancing the books, but for tackling the deeper social damage caused by long-term dependency.

Another key target of the shadow chancellor is the civil service, where he will argue that £8bn in savings can be made by reducing the headcount from 517,000 down to 2016 levels of 384,000.

Scrapping the Climate Change Act and “costly and ineffective green subsidies being pushed by Ed Miliband” is also on Sir Mel’s agenda. The Tories say there are savings of £1.6bn a year to be made in this area.

And closing all asylum hotels will save at least £3.5bn, the Tories say – at least £1.6bn of which they have already allocated to their new ICE-style “removals force”, to detain and remove 150,000 illegal migrants per year.

In his speech, Sir Mel Stride MP is expected to say: “The Conservative Party will never, ever make fiscal commitments without spelling out exactly how they will be paid for.

“We’re the only party that gets it. The only party that will stand up for fiscal responsibility. We must get on top of government spending.

“We cannot deliver stability unless we live within our means. No more pretending we can keep spending money we simply do not have.”

👉Listen to Politics at Sam and Anne’s on your podcast app👈

‘Trussonomics is still in full swing’

But Labour Party chair Anna Turley said: “The Tories let welfare bills, civil service numbers and asylum hotel use skyrocket on their watch – and they’ve never apologised. Now they want to rehash failed promises from their failed manifesto to try to solve the problems they caused.

“This is the same old Tories, with the same old policies. They didn’t work then and you can’t trust them now.”

And Liberal Democrat Treasury spokeswoman Daisy Cooper said it was “clear the Conservative Party learnt absolutely nothing from their disastrous handling of the economy, which left families struggling with a cost-of-living crisis and public services on their knees”.

She added: “Cutting vital support to bring household bills down, trying to balance the books on the backs of people with mental health conditions and slashing the UK’s soft power abroad through aid budget cuts shows Trussonomics is still in full swing.”