Pakai, aged 25 looks happy for the first time in months as she cradles her sickly young baby. "We thought that he would certainly die because he was so weak but now he is improving," she told IRIN in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif. Pakai and a dozen more mothers nurse their malnourished babies in the first Therapeutic Feeding Centre (TFC) to be opened in a government hospital in northern Afghanistan. This new centre is being established and operated with assistance from the international NGO, Save the Children and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). According to several nutritional surveys carried by different aid agencies over the past year, up to 16,000 children in northern Afghanistan are severely malnourished and needed supplementary feeding to recover and survive. Children under five constitute some 20 percent of the population of 2.5 million people in the five northern Afghan provinces of Balkh, Samangan, Jauzjan, Sar-e Pol and Faryab. These children mostly live in situations defined by poverty, chronic hunger, displacement and violence. A shortage of safe drinking water, as well as poor sanitation and hygiene, add to the already poor health status of many children in Afghanistan. Only 13 per cent of the population has access to safe drinking water, and only 12 per cent has access to adequate sanitation facilities. [source: IRIN. For the full story, visit: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34201&SelectRegion=Central_Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN]