Contributions from the Irish public to Afghanistan are enabling dramatic improvements in health and education, an Irish representative of the United Nations Children's Fund has said.
However, the humanitarian situation remains "very difficult" because of access problems and severe winter conditions, according to Ms Lynn Geldof, who works with UNICEF in Geneva.
"While help is getting through to the more accessible areas, we keep coming across pockets of severe malnutrition," Ms Geldof said in Dublin yesterday after returning from a three-week visit to Afghanistan.
"It's exhilarating. There's a tremendous spirit of hope and optimism about. People feel they've turned the corner and they just want to get on with things." Since the departure of the Taliban, schools have been "stuffed" with children anxious to make up for the lost years of education, she said.
A new curriculum and teaching materials are being prepared in time for the official return to school of 1.5 million pupils next month. Some of the funding has come from the €500,000 raised by the Irish public for UNICEF over the past year.
"There's an extraordinary will by and for Afghans to create the future stability that will ensure that children enjoy their right to education."
In a country where a woman dies in childbirth every 30 minutes, major resources are being directed at the health service.
Ms Geldof visited the Malalai Hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan's only maternity teaching hospital, where doctors and nurses are being trained to provide instruction for safe deliveries in the rest of the country.
To reduce the threat of measles epidemics, a mass vaccination programme is being planned, starting with children in refugee camps and the cities. Children as old as 12 will be immunised because of the gap in coverage due to the war and earlier conflicts.
According to Ms Geldof, the measles vaccine is harder to administer because it must be injected and because the vaccine can spoil. In contrast, the polio vaccine can be given in droplet form on the tongue.
However, it does not meet with any cultural resistance and in many places, it is administered in local mosques.
Parts of Kabul look "like Dresden" after the second World War, Ms Geldof said, although most of the damage was caused by earlier wars, "but there's an incredible excitement and buzz about what is happening now".
UNICEF has operated in Afghanistan since 1949.
