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UN: A child dies every 10 minutes in Yemen

April 9, 2021 at 9:06 am

A woman holding her child at a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen on 13 February 2021 [Mohammed Hamoud/Anadolu Agency]

The United Nations yesterday warned of the “imminent collapse of the health situation in Yemen,” stressing that tut is “untolerable.”

“20.1 million people in Yemen are in need of medical assistance,” United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Twitter.

It added that 51 per cent of the country’s health facilities were fully functioning, noting that “67 out of 333 districts do not have doctors.”

Overall, the plight of children remains grim, with a child under the age of five dying every 10 minutes of preventable causes

OCHA pointed out.

Impoverished Yemen has been mired in conflict since a Saudi-led coalition intervened in March 2015 to restore the government ousted from power in the capital Sanaa by Iran-aligned Houthi forces in 2014. The six-year-long war has led to the collapse of the country’s health system and the outbreak of epidemics and diseases, leaving over 100,000 dead.

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