AMNA NAWAZ: Well, it's been 18 months since the Trump administration made across-the-board cuts to foreign aid and began the process of dismantling USAID,or the U.S.

Agency for International Development.

Tonight, we examine one of the country's hardest hit, Afghanistan.

GEOFF BENNETT: Refugees International attributes more than 160 deaths over the past 18 months to cuts in aid, with devastating consequences for mothers and infants.

Now special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen and videographer Eric O'Connor have the latest report in our continuing series from Afghanistan five years after the U.S.

military withdrawal.

Some names have been changed for protection.

And a warning: Some of the images and accounts in this story are disturbing.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: The remote rocky mountains of rural Herat.

We're heading to one of the many villages here, now cut off from medical assistance by international funding cuts.

As we arrive, a man suddenly runs over asking for help.

Someone's collapsed.

He tells us to hurry.

ABDUL SALEM, Village Resident (through translator): He was struggling to breathe, and then he fell.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: When Abdul Salem's brother started having chest pains, they called a doctor in the nearest town 30 minutes away.

Unless they could get him here, the clinic said, the family was on their own.

Then he started having a heart attack.

They still wouldn't send an ambulance.

Our team is trained in emergency first aid.

We jump in to do what we can to save him.

But he's been without oxygen for too long.

MAN: Stop.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: It's too late.

MAN: Sorry.

I'm so sorry.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: His name was Abdul Rahman (ph).

He was the head of this community, a beloved father, husband and brother.

His brother says he was the best man in the village.

He tries to tell us about him, but he's overcome by emotion and can't continue.

All day, the mourners come.

As the sun sets, they bury him high on the hill overlooking his home.

These desperately poor villages were once served by rural and mobile clinics and feeding services funded primarily by the U.S.

Agency for International Development, or USAID.

But after the devastating funding cuts of the past two years, that lifeline for remote areas like these has disappeared.

As we start to speak to other villagers, it's the same story down every alley in every home.

Like most of the women here, Simagul never has enough to eat.

She tried for seven years to have a baby.

Finally, last year, little Fahim arrived.

She was so undernourished she couldn't breast-feed or afford other food for him.

Unable to get to a government hospital or pay their fees, 6-month-old Fahim got worse.

SIMAGUL, Bereaved Mother (through translator): He constantly had fever, vomiting, and diarrhea.

If he got better for two days, then he'd get sick again.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: One day, Fahim fell unconscious, shaking violently.

With the economy here in tatters, Simagul's husband was away in Iran looking for work.

Knowing that Taliban checkpoints wouldn't let her through alone, she had to search both for a male chaperone and a motorcycle to borrow, wasting precious minutes as little Fahim convulsed in her arms.

SIMAGUL (through translator): By the time I found my brother-in-law to take us, my child's condition had already become critical.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: When they finally reached the nearest clinic, miles away in Adraskan, there was nothing they could do for him.

They were sent to the hospital two hours further in Herat City.

SIMAGUL (through translator): He had another seizure.

He died on the way before we even reached Herat.

At that moment, when they told me my son had died, I lost all sense of myself.

I didn't know what to do.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Now her baby girl, Somaya, not even a-year-old, is starting to show the same signs, constant diarrhea, a distended belly, rashes on her skin.

SIMAGUL (through translator): I just pray my daughter doesn't die like my son.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Yeganeh is just 21.

Her husband is 70.

She's lost five children in her young life.

YEGANEH, Bereaved Mother (through translator): I was 15 when I got married.

I gave birth to one child every year and they all died.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: She remembers when her first little girl began to waste away, riven by the symptoms of malnutrition and bacterial infection.

YEGANEH (through translator): We didn't have anything to treat her with and she died.

Each one, their stomach suddenly swelled, and they died.

I feel heartbroken.

As a mother, it's very hard to give birth to five children, and they all die.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Now she has another baby on the way.

The villagers believe she's cursed and want to take her baby away from her.

She knows all she needs is proper care for her and the child.

YEGANEH (through translator): The doctor said you should treat yourself, but we don't have any money to pay for my treatment.

I'm afraid that this child will die like the others.

I wish for this baby to live.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Her stolen children are buried in the vast rolling plains that lie between Yeganeh and the hospital that might have saved them.

She can't even visit their graves without permission from her husband.

Laleh is a midwife who used to work for a mobile clinic here run by the International Rescue Committee; 80 percent of their work in Herat was funded by USAID.

LALEH, Midwife (through translator): Once, we saw a woman being transported by her husband on a motorcycle.

We delivered her baby in the middle of the road.

If we weren't there, the mother or the child could have died on the way to the hospital.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: They lost that funding last year and tried to limp on to sustain these vital services.

But, earlier this year, the money ran out and they were forced to close.

Now, without support from health workers like her, maternal and child mortality is spiking.

LALEH (through translator): Now I think, who provides services to them when we're not there?

I'm really heartbroken when I hear that women and children of my country have died, and I couldn't do anything for them.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Worse still, the Taliban has decreed that women must be accompanied by a mahram, a male guardian from their family, at all times outdoors, even in a medical emergency.

Health workers across Afghanistan report women and babies dying at Taliban checkpoints because they aren't allowed to pass to get to hospital.

LALEH (through translator): There was a woman here who was in labor.

Because the midwife who came didn't have a mahram, they sent her back home.

As a result, both the mother and the baby died.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Laleh now faces unemployment, and with the Taliban crackdown on women working, she can no longer support her family.

She fears female-focused health care will soon disappear entirely.

LALEH (through translator): Because education for women is banned, no new midwives have graduated for five years.

I see the future for Afghanistan and Afghan women in a very dark situation.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: This crisis isn't a slow decline, but a sudden and crippling shock.

After last year's USAID cuts, nearly 500 clinics closed; 300 more shut earlier this year, leaving six million people without any local health services.

As always, it's the poorest of the poor with no other options who are the hardest hit.

Child hunger in Afghanistan has now hit a record high, with over a third of the country's provinces facing critical levels of acute child malnutrition.

And, this year, nearly half Afghanistan's children aren't getting enough to eat.

Even for the lucky ones who do make it to a hospital, their condition is often so severe they can't be saved.

Dr.

Sikander Ghani heads the child malnutrition ward at Nangarhar's government hospital on the other side of the country from Herat.

And Yasmin is three months old?

DR.

SIKANDER GHANI Nangarhar Government Hospital: Yes, she is three months old.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: And the seizures and sepsis are caused by the severe malnutrition.

DR.

SIKANDER GHANI: Yes.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: With local maternity clinics and child feeding services across the country now closed by funding cuts, parents travel huge distances from four surrounding provinces to get here.

Many wait too long out of fear they can't pay.

Nearly 20 percent of the babies who come here now die.

Last month, they hospitalized more than 250 kids, their highest ever intake.

DR.

SIKANDER GHANI (through translator): Most of the children come in very bad condition, often unconscious or in a coma.

When they come late, the symptoms are much worse.

So curing it becomes much more difficult.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: The hospital used to receive USAID funding, but now that's gone too.

DR.

SIKANDER GHANI (through translator): They shouldn't tie these health services, these humanitarian services to politics.

When USAID was funding us, the condition of the hospital was good.

Specifically, the conditions of malnutrition were better.

See for yourself.

Now the equipment here, most of it's damaged.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: With such limited resources, it's an endless battle.

Sometimes, they have enough medicine, oxygen, beds.

Sometimes, they don't.

DR.

SIKANDER GHANI (through translator): It's truly distressing when a child dies in front of our eyes.

With a well-equipped unit, their lives could have definitely been saved.

It hurts.

But what can we do?

We're trying our best.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Farmi sits quietly in the corner, her shoulders sagging with despair as she clutches her emaciated baby to her chest.

FARMI, Mother of Patient (through translator): His bones are sticking out.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Mortaza is 6 months old.

He weighs just 4.5 pounds.

He should weigh closer to 20.

FARMI (through translator): He needed formula milk, but we could not even afford that.

We also couldn't even afford to bring him here.

Poverty is a terrible thing.

When you have no one and no money, you can't do anything.

No one cares about you.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Cradling her baby on the floor of the hospital, she tries desperately to feed him formula over and over again.

But he's too sick and can't keep it down.

FARMI (through translator): He can't even tell us where he's in pain.

Whenever you touch him, he cries.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: They have been here six days.

The doctors have done what they can, but Mortaza's condition is too advanced.

He's not getting better.

FARMI (through translator): When they said he would not get better, my heart dropped.

I lost hope and thought he's going to die.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Mortaza is Farmi's only child.

His twin brother died in childbirth.

She doesn't know what she will do if she loses him.

FARMI (through translator): My message to Americans is this.

Help this place.

I cry constantly for him.

He has suffered so much.

When I look at him, my heart breaks.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: A generation of mothers and children abandoned to suffer and die in the dark.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Leila Molana-Allen in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

GEOFF BENNETT: The "News Hour" asked the U.S.

State Department for a response to questions surrounding the aid cuts detailed in this story.

They did not directly address the deaths that have occurred, but did write in part - - quote -- "Since the Biden administration's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban have consistently failed to take action to improve the country's stability and uphold their counterterrorism commitments."

They continued: "At the direction of President Trump, the U.S.

Department of State has suspended any foreign assistance that could possibly reach the hands of the Taliban."

AMNA NAWAZ: The State Department also cited a March 2025 inspector general's report on Afghanistan that said aid groups -- quote -- "needed to strengthen agreements with public international organizations to ensure that U.S.

funds are not diverted to terror groups."