Thread by @SkyNews

Sky News’ @AlexCrawfordSky is in the city of Herat in western Afghanistan, where she’s met families who’ve sold their kidneys and even their children so they can eat.

The country’s economy has virtually collapsed – and the people are reverting to extreme measures to survive

One mother and father have both sold their kidneys.

They say all they have left now is to sell one of their eight children. The 25-year-old mother says: ‘My three-year-old son died of hunger. I can’t see them all lose their lives…at least this way, someone else will feed them'

There’s a lucrative kidney trade in this area with the region’s proximity to Iran, and many of the buyers are from across the border.

Poverty has driven more Afghans onto the operating tables to try to wipe out debts and provide food for their families

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In the Herat Regional Hospital, an emotional and tearful doctor says they cannot afford enough dressings to bandage young patients in the children’s ward of the hospitals’ Burns Unit

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The withdrawal of foreign troops last August saw the Taliban sweep into power.

The international community imposed sanctions and billions of dollars-worth of assets were frozen. The economy has virtually collapsed with few jobs and very little hard currency available

This is the country in which a Coalition of nations spent twenty years, shelling out billions of dollars to ‘rebuild it’ – now the United Nations says it's fast becoming the centre of the globe’s worst humanitarian disaster

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Now, with the Taliban in power and the rest of the world still not officially recognising the legitimacy of their government, it’s the Afghan people who are having to resort to ever more extreme measures to survive

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Watch the full report tonight on📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube.

And read the full eyewitness piece from @AlexCrawfordSky here 👇trib.al/MH4hezD

@AlexCrawfordSky Watch @AlexCrawfordSky's full report from Afghanistan where she meets families who’ve sold their kidneys and even their children so they can eat.

Warning: Some viewers may find the scenes in this report distressing