Child malnutrition rising in Yemen as fighting intensifies — UNICEF

The United Nations children's agency reported on Friday (September 25) a rise in acute malnutrition among children in Yemen, including in the most severe cases, as fighting in the country disrupts access to healthcare and treatment centers.

“We're very concerned about a very visible increase in acute malnutrition among children,” UNICEF’s Country Representative in Yemen, Akhil Iyer, told reporters in Geneva via video link from Aden.

More than a quarter of the nearly 2,900 children screened in recent weeks by UNICEF mobile nutrition teams in accessible areas were acutely malnourished, Iyer said. About 200 of them were severely acutely malnourished, the deadliest form.

Yemen's civil war between Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces and Iran-backed Houthis has sharply escalated after it had largely been frozen in a 2022 truce.

Violence has flared along old front lines in recent weeks, including around the southwestern city of Taiz, as the Houthis swept south along the Red Sea coast, prompting a humanitarian crisis with over 133,000 people displaced and some fleeing to Africa across the Red Sea.

Over the past three weeks, around 71,000 children have been forced from their homes due to the conflict, UNICEF said.

Every day, UNICEF is recording more cases of child malnutrition in areas it can access where internally displaced people have recently arrived.

However, UNICEF said this was only a snapshot of the situation unfolding across the country, where 2.2 million children under five are projected to be acutely malnourished this year, with over half a million projected to be suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

-Cecile Mantovani. Writing: Olivia Le Poidevin/Reuters