Amman: Warring sides in Yemen’s civil war have promised visiting UN agency chiefs to clear obstacles to aid delivery in a nation where cholera is spreading rapidly and hundreds of thousands of children are severely malnourished, the head of the UN child welfare agency said on Thursday.
The growing suffering of Yemen’s civilians, including millions of children, is the result of fighting that erupted in September 2014 after Iran-backed Al Houthis overthrew the internationally-recognised government. The US has backed a Saudi-led Arab coalition, which stepped in to help Yemenis restore their legitimate government, with intelligence, satellite imagery and billions of dollars in weapons sales.
Anthony Lake, executive director of Unicef, said people around the world should feel “immense pity, even agony, for all of these children and others who are suffering, and they should feel anger, anger that this, our generation, is scarred by the irresponsibility of governments and others to allow these things to be happening”.
In Yemen, he stood by the bedside of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition, accompanied by mothers who had struggled to get them to the hospital.
“What stays with you is their eyes,” he said of the children. “Their eyes are looking up at their mothers with this look of trust, and we won’t know for how many that trust will be fulfilled and they live, and [how many] others will die.”
More than 600 rehydration centres treating acute watery diarrhoea and suspected cholera have been set up, with plans to increase the number of centers to more than 1,000, Lake said.
The main obstacle to ramping up the fight against cholera is lack of resources, he said.
“In the areas where we are working effectively, both the number of cases and the fatality rate are going down,” Lake told The Associated Press in the Jordanian capital of Amman.
“So it’s a race between us and the rains and the continuing destruction and the fighting — and of course, you always hope you will win,” he said.
Lake was joined by the heads of the World Food Programme and the World Health Organisation during the Yemen tour. The trio met with officials from the rival governments to win assurances that obstacles to aid delivery would be removed.
Their demands included getting access to hard-to-reach areas, being able to bring in more supplies, including medical aid, and reducing delays.
“They said, yes, they would try to speed things up,” Lake said of the rival sides. “They made a commitment and we will now hope that it is met.”
In numbers
Around 400,000 cases of suspected cholera and close to 1,900 deaths linked to the disease have been recorded since April, with the number expected to rise during the current rainy season.
Nearly two million children are acutely malnourished, which makes them more susceptible to cholera.
Four out of five children need humanitarian aid.
More than 60 per cent of the population don’t know where their next meal will come from, pushing the country to the brink of famine.
Half the Yemen population lacks adequate health care.
