Dariush the Great
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Famine has arrived in pockets of Yemen. Saudi ships blocking fuel aren't helping | CNN
When 10-month-old Hassan Ali arrived at the hospital, doctors were hopeful they could save him. So many children in northern Yemen, after all, don't even get this far, starved not only of food but also the fuel needed just to reach medical help.
Hodeidah, Yemen (CNN)When 10-month-old Hassan Ali arrived at the hospital, doctors were hopeful they could save him. So many children in northern Yemen, after all, don't even get this far, starved not only of food but also the fuel needed just to reach medical help.
CNN watched overstretched doctors and nurses as they tried to give oxygen to Hassan, who had arrived six days earlier but wasn't putting on any weight, and was struggling to breathe. Just hours later, Hassan died.
"He is just one of many cases," said Dr. Osman Salah. The ward is full of children suffering from malnutrition, including babies just weeks old.
Every month, this hospital's pediatric ward takes in more patients than its capacity of 50, sometimes twice as many. Around 12 children die there each month, Salah said. He and his staff are running on empty -- they haven't been paid for more than half a year.
Yemen has stepped up to the precipice of famine, and back again, many times over its six years of war. Now, famine conditions not seen in the country for two years have returned to pockets of the country.
An estimated 47,000 people are likely to be living with "catastrophic" levels of food insecurity -- or famine-like conditions -- according to an analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the world's authority on food security. A further 16 million are living in either "crisis" or "emergency" food security conditions, the analysis shows. That's more than half of Yemen's population.
The rapidly deteriorating situation is the result mostly of funding cuts that have battered activities by agencies like the World Food Programme, which is struggling now to meet the most basic of needs for millions of Yemenis, particularly in the country's north.
But it has also been exacerbated by a mounting fuel crisis. Staff at the hospital in Abs, where baby Hassan lost his life, say they will have to shut in less than three weeks if they don't receive more funding and fuel to keep their generators going. It's the same story all over the north.
"If fuel were easily available on the market, the number of cases we are seeing in the hospital would be much higher, because at the moment, there are patients who are staying at home, because of the challenges and expenses of traveling to the hospital," Dr. Salah said.
As a result, said Dr. Salah, children are simply dying in their homes.
A bitter blockade
Fuel typically comes into the country's north via the port of Hodeidah, usually bustling with economic activity at the best of times. Even during Yemen's ongoing civil war, it has been a lively gateway for the conflict economy, where food and other aid that Yemenis rely on arrive.
But the port is now a ghost town. Hundreds of food aid trucks sit parked in a line stretching for miles along a dusty road. A cavernous tank that usually stores some 2,500 metric tons of oil sits empty at the port. It lets off an echoey clang with the softest touch.
rather than a war with Saudi Coalition. And also how can you say that the Saudis are fake arabs? And also how can you say that Houthis are Real Hejazi Arabs? Itna bogus aur bekaar claim aaj tak nhi suna.
