The United Nations World Food Program called on world leaders to stand behind a common agenda to prevent Yemen from sliding into famine, noting that "hungry and exhausted" Yemeni families cannot wait any longer.
According to estimates by the World Food Program, today, Thursday, more than half of Yemenis (16.2 million people) suffer from food insecurity, more than 5 million people are at direct risk of starvation, and about 50,000 people are already suffering from famine-like conditions.
It is estimated that about 13 million people in Yemen receive assistance from the World Food Program, such as flour, corn oil, cereals, sugar and salt. WFP also supports 3.3 million children and mothers with nutritional supplements to treat and prevent malnutrition, and provides school snacks to 1.55 million children – to boost their nutrition and encourage them to stay in school.
A United Nations statement stated that Yemen had for years been described as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, and by the end of 2020, this crisis worsened even more. An analysis of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) last December showed that for the first time in two years, pockets of famine have returned to Yemen.
According to the World Health Organization, "Between extreme hunger and the loss of life, a person always gets sick." Severe hunger is a serious and life-threatening form of acute malnutrition as it weakens the immune system, leaving the body vulnerable to infectious diseases such as cholera, malaria, pneumonia and measles.
Malnutrition, even in its less severe form, leads to long-term effects such as impaired physical and cognitive development, reduced educational attainment and work productivity, and increased risk of disease and death.
According to the World Food Program, these harsh measures are affecting Yemen's youngest children, half of whom are at risk of malnutrition in 2021 - 2.3 million children under the age of five.
It is noteworthy that the World Food Program was able to obtain 937 million dollars, out of the 1.9 billion dollars required for the year 2021 for Yemen, and donors provided additional funding, and this year the World Food Program was able to increase food assistance in areas with the highest rates of food insecurity.
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