'Five-year-old Fazlur Rahman has a stage four tumour in his neck and Afghan doctors are battling to prolong his young life with chemotherapy.

He lies in an overcrowded and under-resourced cancer ward in Kabul's Jamhuriat hospital, one of just three cancer centres still functioning in the country.

At the hospital you can see the impact aid is having, but also why more is needed.'

Salam Al-Janabi from Unicef Afghanistan said the country was coming out of a "very difficult winter" where there has been a rise in preventable diseases, and a malnutrition crisis across the country.

"If this is no support... a whole generation are at risk," he told ITV News.

Mr Janabi said it is "shocking to see how emaciated and helpless these children are when they are at a point of severe acute malnourishment".

Report contains distressing images.

Afghan parents are flocking to hospitals and clinics with “sick babies and children withered to their bones” as health workers struggle to provide necessary care and treatments.

It has been more than 24 hours since Farahanaz, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, has had a “proper meal”.

“As adults, we can manage, but when the kids ask for food, I don’t know what to tell them,” the 24-year-old former radio presenter from northern Afghanistan told Al Jazeera.

Every few seconds a sick child is brought in to the emergency room of the main hospital in Lashkar Gah in a race against time to save the youngest casualties of Afghanistan's hunger crisis.

Amidst the heart-rending sound of dozens of hungry babies crying, and desperate pleas for help from their mothers, nurses scramble to prioritise children who need urgent care. There are many such babies.

One in every five children admitted to critical care is dying, and the situation at the hospital has been made worse in recent weeks by the spread of the highly contagious measles disease that damages the body's immune system, a deadly blow for babies already suffering from malnutrition.