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Hello and welcome to NewsHour live from the BBC World Service in London.

I'm Rebecca Kesbby.

And we begin the program today in Afghanistan, because it's just over three years since the Taliban

retook control of the country as the last US security forces left. This year, having been the

largest donor to Afghanistan, the US has cut all aid to the country, saying it has evidence

that millions of dollars had ended up in Taliban hands.

43% of aid reaching Afghanistan had been coming from the United States,

but the sudden end to that aid has had a seismic impact on local people,

particularly women.

Our South Asia correspondent Yogi to Le Ma'i and her team managed to gain rare access

to the north-eastern Afghan province of Badakshan, and she gathered first-hand evidence of the

impact on maternal mortality in particular and sent this report.

Baddakhshan is one of Afghanistan's most picturesque provinces.

It's got beautiful, big, brown mountains.

We're on our way to a district where we know that a clinic that had midwives

and other services for malnourish children

shut down following the US aid cuts.

We're literally driving through a riverbed.

And that tells you that if clinics in those remote places close down,

people in those areas are left with almost nothing.

It is extremely difficult to make these journeys to the capital

...