The Yemeni people is facing multiple crises, including armed conflict, displacement and risk of famine and disease outbreaks, creating the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crisis. A total of 15.9 million people is severely food insecure, despite ongoing humanitarian food assistance.
The first victims are children with around 1.8 million severely malnourished.
Maintaining operational presence in some of the worstly affected areas of the country and supporting those hardest to reach remains our greatest challenge. We are, however, continuing our nutrition and health programmes, especially our support for severe and moderate acute malnutrition in children under five. This also involves training of health workers and sensitization of vulnerable communities.
The primary focus of Action Against Hunger is to alleviate the suffering caused by malnutrition. We work in approximately 60 health facilities across the country treating acute malnutrition in stabilization centres and through home-based treatments.
Abdulqader was nine months old when his father brought him for the first time to the Al Alzuhra health facility in the Hodeidah governorate.
His situation is one of many experienced by Yemeni children since the outbreak of the war. His father Mohammed used to live in Hared district and work in security management as a guard. The family was forced to flee due to the intensification of hostilities and they are now registered as Internally Displaced People. Abdulqader has five siblings (two sisters and three brothers) and the whole family is depending on a small sum they collect as beggars. Abdulqader’s father said that the only way he could bring his son to the health facility was because their services were free of charge, as otherwise he would not have been able to afford it.
When referred to the hospital, Abdulqader was suffering from cycles of untreated diarrhoea. After taking all anthropometric measurements such as weight, height and MUAC, he was admitted to the Outpatient Therapeutic Programme (OTP).