UN releases funds to save Afghanistan health system from collapse

The United Nations aid chief said Wednesday he had released $45 million in emergency funds to help prevent Afghanistan’s battered healthcare system from collapsing, news agency AFP reported.

Martin Griffiths, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coord­inator, warned in a statement that “medicines, medical supplies and fuel are running out in Afghanistan.”

“Cold chains are compromised. Essential health-care workers are not being paid,” he said. In a bid to avert catastrophe, Griffiths said he was releasing funds from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund to boost life-saving support in Afghanistan, AFP said.

“Allowing Afghanistan’s healthcare delivery system to fall apart would be disastrous,” he said.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been visiting Kabul, meeting Taliban leaders as well as patients and hospital workers. “Afghanistan’s hea­lth system is on the brink of collapse.

Unless urgent action is taken, the country faces an imminent humanitarian catastrophe,” he said in a statement. Afghanistan’s healthcare system was plunged into crisis after the Taliban swept into power last month, complicating aid deliveries and leaving many health facilities understaffed.

China, Russia, Pak special envoys meet Taliban, top Afghan leaders

Special envoys of China, Russia, and Pakistan have met the top officials of the interim Taliban government as well as Afghan leaders Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah in Kabul and discussed the formation of an inclusive government, combating terrorism, and handling the humanitarian situation, a top Chinese official said on Wednesday.

The three special envoys have held talks with acting Prime Minister Mohammad Hasan Akhund, Foreign Minister Amir Khan Mutaqi, Finance Minister and other high-level officials of the interim government, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.

Taliban names Afghan UN envoy, asks to speak to world leaders

The Taliban have asked to address world leaders at the United Nations in New York this week and nominated their Doha-based spokesman Suhail Shaheen as Afghanis­tan’s UN ambassador, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Tuesday. Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi made the request in a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

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