Yemeni children are starving, famine imminent

Hungry and too weak to move or even cry. A story of Ghazi Saleh ,10. He weighs barely eight kilograms.

His case is not peculiar in this hospital in Taëz, a city in southwestern Yemen.

Medical staff move from one bed to another to examine malnourished children and infants like Ghazi

Yemeni children are the hardest hit by a war between government forces and Houthi rebels. Saudia Arabia and Iran are said to be supporting each faction.

According to the UN, a Yemeni child under the age of five is dying even 10 minutes from preventable diseases and sever acute malnutrition.

Sona Othman is Director of the Nutrition Department at Al-Mudhafar Hospital in Taez.

“We receive one new case of malnutrition a day, and some are very severe. Yesterday, we received the case of Ghazi, which is extremely severe and reflects the deteriorating health situation in the country”, Othman said.

According to the UN, more than 14 million people are at risk of starvation, while they are trapped in a conflict which shows no sign of abatement.

“My husband worked before the war, and he was just earning enough to feed us, but today there is nothing left. We want this war to end, but it’s getting worse and worse”, said Fatima Salmane, mother of a malnourished baby.

The UN hopes to resume peace talks in Sweden by the end of the year.

The war has killed an estimated 10,000 people since 2015 and caused what the UN describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Human rights groups say that the actual number of victims could be five times higher.