Amman: The World Health Organisation’s Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean said more than half of Yemen’s population is in “urgent” need of aid, and nearly 17.8 million people are in need of health aid, half of them children.
According to a WHO statement issued Monday, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, Hanan Balkhi, said health needs are urgent, but the lack of funding is chronic.
The organisation remains obligated to prioritize the health services needed equally to save lives, which are difficult decisions to make, stressing the need for support.
Regarding the current situation in Yemen, Iman Taj al-Din, of the Central Laboratory in Aden, said: “The conflict has destroyed everything; many health facilities have closed their doors, epidemics have spread, and diseases such as polio and cholera have re-emerged after it was thought that they had become part of the past.”
She added that children, in particular, are vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases, such as polio, measles
, whooping cough and diphtheria, and at the same time suffer from alarmingly high rates of malnutrition.
Taj al-Din nearly half of children under the age of five suffer from moderate to severe stunting, or nearly 2.4 million children.
In turn, the representative of WHO and the head of the mission in Yemen, Arturo Pesigan, said, “After years of conflict, the lives of millions of Yemenis have become dependent on emergency health and humanitarian needs, which limits their ability to achieve comprehensive sustainable development.”
Pesigan added that this situation is exacerbated by the significant decline in international support, which makes communities vulnerable to increasingly deteriorating conditions.
WHO noted in the statement that funding has seen as 45 per cent decrease in the past five years, at a time when the organisation needs $77 million in 2024 to provide basic health assistance.
Source: Jordan News Agency