In a recent report on Friday, UNICEF, the UN children’s fund, said that the number of malnourished children in Yemen could reach 2.4 million, increasing by 20 percent by the end this year.
The report also read that another 6000 children under the age group of five could die from preventable causes as the country’s already struggling healthcare system is struggling due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
United Nations said that children in Yemen are at risk of starvation amid COVID-19 which is declining the condition of war-torn Yemen even more.
UN appealed for nearly $500m for urgent humanitarian assistance.
According to the UNICEF report, around 9.58 million children lack proper access to safe water, sanitation or hygiene, thus, increasing a greater risk of infection, while 7.8 million do not have access to education amid the school closures.
UNICEF Representative, Sara Beysolow Nyanti in her statement said that countless childhoods have been lost in this five-year war and UN fears that there will be loss of many more lives as COVID-19 spreads. “We cannot overstate the scale of this emergency as children, in what is already the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, battle for survival as COVID-19 takes hold,” she was quoted as saying by Al-Jazeera.
“If we do not receive urgent funding, children will be pushed to the brink of starvation and many will die.”
More than 900 cases of COVID-19 and 250 deaths have been declared by Yemen’s internationally recognized government. The true cases due to the virus are believed to be much higher.
Five years of war in Yemen have pitted the internationally recognised government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, against the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels.
At a closed UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock warned many more people will starve to death, succumb to COVID-19, die of cholera and watch their children die because they have not been immunised for killer diseases.
He added the coronavirus was spreading rapidly across Yemen and about 25 percent of the country’s confirmed cases have died – “five times the global average”