UNICEF: Yemen war erases decade of health gains, many children starving

Yemen has lost a decade’s worth of gains in public health as a result of war and economic crisis, with an estimated 63,000 children dying last year of preventable causes often linked to malnutrition, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.

 

Yemen has lost a decade’s worth of gains in public health as a result of war and economic crisis, with an estimated 63,000 children dying last year of preventable causes often linked to malnutrition, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.

About 3.3 million people, including 2.2 million children, across the Arab peninsula’s poorest country are suffering from acute malnutrition, it said. They include nearly half a million children under the age of five with severe acute malnutrition.

The most severe form of malnutrition leaves young children vulnerable to life-threatening but preventable diarrhoeal diseases, malaria and respiratory infections.

At least 10,000 people have been killed, since the Saudi Arabia started airstrikes against Yemen.