- Malnutrition and famine in the wake of the war in Yemen have increased further during the beginning of the year.
- The UN now calls Yemen the most dangerous place on earth for a child.
- Our correspondent has traveled far into the Yemeni countryside where the situation for children is directly life-threatening.
It rustles when the gold-colored foil cover around little Sama is opened. She is just skin and bones and has discolorations of starvation.
She gets a drip and has an oversized oxygen mask. She is almost two months old and weighs 1.5 kilos. Every hour is a struggle to live. Her twin sister just lost that fight.
She is a young victim of the war and blockade against Yemen that has left millions of people hungry and dependent on help. Her grandmother, Hamadia Mohammed, says they cannot eat every day.
– We do not have real food or vegetables. We eat rice and wheat if we even get food, she says.
– When we do not have food, we just have to be patient, what can we do?
It’s a living nightmare for millions of children here. Two million need treatment for malnutrition, 400,000 are so severely malnourished that they almost completely risk dying. And the situation is getting worse all the time.
Why? The war so clear. And the Saudi Alliance’s blockade, which means that ports and airspace are controlled by the coalition. Very few goods and supplies are allowed in – so far this year not a single oil tanker. As a result, supplies cannot be transported, the hospitals’ diesel generators stop and the entire economy plummets.
Here at the clinic for life-threatening malnourished children in Abs in western Yemen, all beds are occupied. All the children who are hospitalized here, for a struggle to survive.
It smells like ammonia. It dusts sand and a lizard hurries quickly under a bunk.
But it does not notice the nine-month-old girl who weighs 4 kilos, or the little boy, so malnourished that he has to fight for every breath. The head looks unnaturally large on the small body. So many fates, so many children, so little hope.
Naim Amad is seven months. Her big eyes stare blankly, her stomach is swollen. The arms are thin with lobed skin – like bird legs. She sucks on one thumb. Her mother is in despair.
– We can not even afford milk. That’s what we have to buy if we get money, what can we do? she asks.
– We feel good if our children feel good. They are most important. But now they are not well, we need help! says the mother.
But help gets she wait. If the children are discharged, it is to the same struggle for food and survival again.
This is a war where children pay the highest price.
Source: ICELAND NEWS