KABUL—In a bitterly cold bedroom at the start of winter in Kabul, 22-year Maryam sat with her baby son bundled up in a red jumper as he coughed days after being discharged for the third time from a hospital ward for suspected pneumonia.
Every time 10-month old Rahmat’s parents bring him home from the crowded, but warmer hospital, they say he gets sick again. The parents said they spend whatever they can from their shrinking income to trying to heat the room, which drops below freezing at night.
“I am scared, it is only the beginning of winter, what is going to happen?” said Maryam, saying the family could only buy coal in small quantities and had to cut back on food to afford even that after her husband lost his construction job….