TAIZ and ADEN, Yemen — Malia Qassim Mahmoud found herself at Al-Thawra hospital in Taiz, seeking help for the third time for the acute malnutrition affecting her family. Two years ago, her older son was severely malnourished. He recovered but his growth has been stunted; she says the 6-year-old is much smaller than other kids his age.
A year later, she herself had to be hospitalized for malnutrition. Then it was her 1-year-old baby, lying limp in her arms, his skin a sickly yellow color, unable to even open his mouth as his mother tried to feed him protein paste.
“Most days we can only get water and flour and I make a doughy paste and that’s what we eat,” Mahmoud said. “We can’t afford more, and we haven’t received any aid through the war.”
This family is among at least 20 million people in Yemen who need food assistance in the midst of what the United Nations calls one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
In 2014 Houthi rebels backed by Iran overthrew the Saudi-backed government. They took control of parts of Yemen, including the capital city Sana’a and half of Taiz, sparking a civil war. The U.N. estimates that the conflict in Yemen has caused over 377,000 deaths, most of which were due to hunger and lack of health care.
Women and children are particularly vulnerable. According to the World Food Programme, 1.3 million pregnant or nursing women and nearly half of Yemen’s children under age 5 — some 2.2 million kids — suffer from acute malnutrition.
Dr. Manal Abdulhaleem, who heads the neonatal department at Al-Sadaqa hospital in the port city of Aden, told NPR they don’t have enough equipment or beds to deal with the number of premature babies with anemia and other issues because the mothers are unable to eat enough.
In the intensive care unit for newborns born with complications due to malnutrition, a nurse pulled a sheet over a baby who had just died. The hospital notified his parents, who weren’t there.
“We see this a lot,” said Abdulraheem….
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