In Pictures: Nepal Border Blockade Puts Children At Risk

Nepal’s current situation puts children at the risk of disease and death.

People stand in a long queue to buy fuel. (Photo Courtesy: Surbindra Kumar Pun)

People atop buses in Nepal. (Photo Courtesy: Hemanta Shrestha)

Unrest over Nepal’s new Constitution has led to severe shortages of fuel, food, medicines and vaccines, putting more than three million children at risk of disease during the harsh winter months, the UN children’s agency UNICEF said recently.

A sick 5-year-old girl Ayusi Darji is cared for by her grandmother Urmila Darji inside a temporary shelter. (Photo: AP)

Nepal has been in turmoil since September when it adopted a new Constitution, sparking protests by members of the ethnic Madhesi groups, who argue that the country’s charter does not reflect their interests.

Nepalese students form a human chain during a protest against blockade in Nepal. (Photo: AP)

Protesters have blockaded trucks from India, leading to acute shortages of fuel and medicine in the landlocked Himalayan nation of 28 million people.

Anjana Shrestha, 28, holds her 19-month-old daughter Smriti at a temporary shelter at the Chuchhepati Camp, where she has been living since the earthquake in April, in Kathmandu, Nepal, Tuesday, December 1, 2015. (Photo: AP)

UNICEF said child survivors of two major earthquakes in April and May could be worst hit by the shortages. The tremors killed nearly 9,000 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 900,000 houses. Many remain homeless.

Kumari Thapa, 25, holds her month-old daughter Ayushma inside a temporary shelter at the Chuchhepati Camp, where she has been living since the earthquake in April. (Photo: AP)

Newborn babies are at particular risk, as fuel shortages mean fewer women can get to hospitals and health centres to give birth, UNICEF said.

A student holding a placard takes part in a protest to show solidarity against the border blockade in Nepal. (Photo: Reuters)

“The plight that children and their families are facing in the country has been worsening by the day and will deteriorate further in the winter months,” UNICEF’s regional director for South Asia, Karin Hulshof, said in a statement.

“There is no time to lose,” she added.

Children’s clothes are laid out on a temporary tent to dry at the Chuchhepati Camp. (Photo: AP)

The fuel shortage has led to an increase in the use of firewood in homes, which raises the risk of pneumonia. More than 800,000 Nepali children under five contracted the illness last year, and around 5,000 died, the agency said.

The government’s regional medical stores have already run out of BCG vaccines against tuberculosis, and stocks of other vaccines and antibiotics are critically low, UNICEF said.