One Child Dies Every 10 Minutes In Yemen: Says UNICEF
MEP: The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) announced on Monday that at least 462,000 children are at risk of starvation in Yemen and are suffering from highest ever recorded rates of malnutrition due to Saudi Arabia’s devastating military campaign against its southern neighbor.
Nearly 2.2 million are in need of urgent care, the report published on its website as saying.
New figures indicate that hunger among children has reached an “all time high.”
The figures are an increase of about 200 percent since 2014.
The report said the worst affected areas were located in the provinces of Hudaydah, Sa’ada, Ta’izz, Hajjah and Lahij, which together have the highest of all cases of severe acute malnutrition in Yemen.
“Malnutrition in Yemen is at an all-time high and increasing,” said UNICEF’s envoy to Yemen, Meritxell Relano, adding, “The state of health of children in the Middle East’s poorest country has never been as catastrophic as it is today.”
Severe acute malnutrition is a major cause of death for children under the age of five, and is apparent when a child has a very low weight for their height and becomes visibly frail and skeletal.
