Sanaa hospital overwhelmed with malnourished kids

(21 Jun 2021) LEAD IN: As Yemen's conflict grinds on, children in Sanaa continue to suffer from malnutrition. STORY-LINE: 6-year-old Abdelrahman is suffering from malnutrition. The Yemeni child who is from Hodeida governorate was brought to Sanaa's Al-Sabeen Hospital for treatment. But, Abdelrahman's "body is weak and cannot tolerate treatment with medicines," says his father, Ibrahim Ghossim. Dozens of other children like Abdelrahman are suffering from malnutrition and are overcrowding the hospital. "We have now received 20 cases and the malnutrition department is at full capacity. We have no more beds," says doctor Abdel-Malik Al-Wahidi, who works at Al-Sabeen Hospital. He says the hospital rejects new cases every day because it has no more space. Humanitarian agencies have seen funding for Yemen drop, that means less food aid is coming into the war-torn country. In February, the United Nations said that more than 2 million Yemeni children under the age of 5 are expected to endure acute malnutrition in 2021. The UN urged stakeholders to end the yearslong conflict that has brought the Arab world's poorest country to the brink of famine. The U.N. report warned that nearly one in six of those kids — 400,000 of the 2.3 million — are at risk of death due to severe acute malnutrition this year, a significant increase from last year's estimates. Yemenis have suffered six years of bloodshed, destruction and humanitarian catastrophe. In 2014, the Iran-allied Houthi rebels seized the capital and much of the country's north. A Saudi-led coalition launched a sweeping military intervention months later to restore the U.N.-backed government. Despite relentless Saudi airstrikes and a blockade of Yemen, the war has ground to a stalemate. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...