Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the closure of (a) 298 nutrition centres and (b) 420 health facilities on humanitarian conditions in Afghanistan in 2025.

We remain gravely concerned about the declining health and nutrition status of the most vulnerable Afghans. We are monitoring the impact of the closures of health and nutrition facilities on the most vulnerable, particularly women and children, and estimate that services for more than 3 million people are impacted. We continue to urge the Taliban to reverse their deadly ban on girls and women receiving medical education. We have adapted our support to provide more flexible funding to help sustain essential and lifesaving health and malnutrition treatment and prevention services. We are working with other donors, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, to safeguard health system capacity including routine immunisations for children and disease surveillance systems. We are convening key partners and donors to strengthen our collective approach to tackling food insecurity and malnutrition in Afghanistan.