Indira Gandhi Children's Hospital (IGCH) officials on Sunday confirmed 32 babies and toddlers, including newborns, have died at the Kabul facility in the past two weeks.

The officials said they don’t have the capacity to cope with the number of patients coming in daily.

According to them they are equipped to deal with 300 patients a day but on average they take in 500 a day.

The director of Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital, Noorulhaq Yousufzai, said many of these patients were coming in from provinces because of the lack of decent healthcare facilities outside of Kabul.

Yousufzai said hundreds of babies and children were brought in from provinces every week but by the time they reach the hospital it is often too late and doctors are unable to save them. He said this is one reason why so many children have died in the past two weeks.

Hospital officials said wards were completely overcrowded and two patients had to share a bed and in some cases there were even three in a bed.

“We don’t have enough beds or equipment, and too many patients. We have to put two in one bed,” Nawab, a doctor said.

The hospital’s director said child mortality would drop in Afghanistan if more decent hospitals were built in the provinces and good doctors recruited.

Another doctor, Sediqa, said: “Sick children travel far to get here and by the time they reach the hospital it is often too late and we can’t do anything for them.”