Attachments
Highlights
• On 10 and 11 May, heavy rainfall and flash floods struck northeastern Afghanistan, affecting 21 districts across Badakhshan (5), Baghlan (10) and Takhar (6) provinces. The weekend’s rains caused the largest flooding event in Afghanistan so far this year. Preliminary reports suggested that 180 people had been killed and 280 injured.
• 1,575,451 children and caregivers (26 per cent girls and women) including 645 children with disabilities, accessed child protection prevention, risk mitigation and response services.
• UNICEF supported 64,488 people with access to safe drinking water through the construction of nine new, and rehabilitation of 19 existing, water supply systems, benefiting 46,988 people across six provinces.
• In May 1,198,823 children were screened for wasting, with 56,017 (56 per cent girls) admitted for treatment as outpatients while 3,449 with severe wasting with medical complications were referred for inpatient treatment.
Situation Overview & Humanitarian Needs
On 10 and 11 May, heavy rainfall and flash floods struck northeastern Afghanistan, affecting 21 districts across Badakhshan (5), Baghlan (10) and Takhar (6) provinces. Preliminary reports suggested that 180 people had been killed and 280 injured. Among the most affected districts are Burka and Baghlan-e-Jadid in Baghlan province where 80 per cent of deaths were recorded. The weekend’s rains caused the largest flooding event in Afghanistan so far this year. Prior to this flooding episode, 30,055 people (4,095 families) had been affected by floods across the country, mainly in the southern and western regions. As of the end of May, 43 schools in Baghlan and 23 schools in Faryab province had been destroyed or damaged and 27 community-based education (CBE) classes were destroyed or damaged (21 in Baghlan and 6 in Faryab provinces). In Ghor province in the western region, 25 public schools were destroyed and another 24 damaged, while 22 CBE classes were destroyed and 91 damaged.
Afghanistan has seen marginal improvements in food security, although over a third of the population (14.2 million) still face high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above), concentrated in the provinces of Badakhshan,
Ghor, and Helmand. While humanitarian aid and enhanced household purchasing power have helped mitigate food insecurity, lingering effects of drought, economic fragility, and new shocks like the influx of returnees from Pakistan and the Herat earthquakes continue to strain the country. The projected decline in the most severe levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase 4) in the coming post-harvest period is attributed to increased humanitarian assistance and improved cereal harvests in 2023, but food insecurity remains high compared to long-term averages in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is also at risk of epidemic prone diseases. The epidemiological curve of suspected measles cases demonstrates an increasing trend since the beginning of 2024. The trend in 2024 is higher than that reported in 2023 and the 2-year average before the 2021-2022 outbreak. Since the beginning of 2024, a total of 28,631 suspected measles cases and 126 deaths (CFR=0.4 per cent) were reported. Among suspected measles cases, 22,999 (80.3 per cent) were among under-five years of age children, and 12,937 (45.2 per cent) were females. Since the beginning of 2024, the highest cumulative incidence of suspected measles cases per 10,000 population has been reported from Khost (22.6 per cent), followed by Balkh (19.7), Samangan (17.6), and Jawzjan (14.6). Moreover, since the beginning of 2024, a total of 51,664 acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) with dehydration cases and 26 associated deaths (CFR=0.05 per cent) were reported from 299 districts, out of which 29,145 (56.4 per cent) were among under-five years of age children and 25,547 (49.4 per cent) were females.