Over a dozen children have died of malnutrition in the last six months in Afghanistan’s western Ghor province, local health authorities admitted on Monday.

“About 300 children suffering from malnutrition have been taken to Ghor provincial hospital over the past six months, and 17 of them have died,” a doctor in the provincial hospital, Mohammad Musa-Alfat said.

Another doctor in the hospital, Eidi Mah-Sultani, said the hospital receives between 20 to 50 children suffering from malnutrition daily.

He said the hospital was facing a “medicine shortage” and unable to offer therapeutic foods to the victims.

A father, Mohammad Karim, said his child had been at the hospital for a week, adding he’s unable to get him medicine or the right food due to shortages and poverty.

Meanwhile, the head of the provincial health department in the war-torn poor province, Mawlawi Ehsanullah, confirmed the shortages but said he had contacted several organisations, including the World Health Organisation (WHO), for help.

Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August, international organisations and countries, including the United States, had severed ties with Kabul and frozen the country’s assets.