Rampant Child Hunger in Yemen

Have you ever seen infants who cannot move their bodies due to severe exhaustion, or seen bones without flesh in their small bodies due to a lack of food?! In Yemen, most of the newborn infants have reached to the point where they are not able to play, nor are they able to smile! Children are always the victims of whatsoever is going on around Yemen. It’s abundantly clear that the lives of these vulnerable and innocent children are at stake if this humanitarian crisis isn’t yet contained.

It’s well known that children are the future of any society. If they are deprived of basic necessities in life, there is no future for the country. Hence, it is important that children are taken care of and given access to food and nutrition at all times.

In Hajjah governorate, the majority of its population does not have access to three meals a day. Children are the most vulnerable group of the society. They suffer from acute malnutrition and starvation due to poverty and rampant food insecurity crisis.

As RDP, in collaboration with WFP, continues to provide nutritional supplements to hundreds of thousands of children and PLW through the blanket supplementary feeding program (BSFP) in 16 districts, 3 of which are in Hajjah governorate, it’s absolutely vital that RDP’s community nutrition volunteers conduct a monthly nutritional survey of villages adjacent to the BSFP food distribution points to discover malnourished people and refer them to health facilities, while normal people are sent to the distribution point to receive preventive nutrition.

The cases of these three children were discovered in Mustaba and Washhah districts and immediately referred to the nearest outpatient therapeutic centers to get the proper treatment. There are however some affected places that haven’t yet been recognized, nor have they been provided with the required humanitarian assistance. Hajjah governorate is an actual example of so many vulnerable households who are severely food insecure and dying to get the assistance they need to sustain their lives.