Child malnutrition rises in Yemen as fighting intensifies, says UNICEF

By Olivia Le Poidevin

GENEVA, Sept 25 (Reuters) - The United Nations children's agency reported on Friday a rise in acute malnutrition among children in Yemen, including in the most severe cases, as fighting disrupts access to healthcare and treatment centres.

“We're very concerned about a very visible increase in acute malnutrition among children,” UNICEF’sCountry Representative in Yemen, Akhil Iyer, told reporters in Geneva via video link from Aden.

More than aquarter of the nearly 2,900 children screened in recent weeks by UNICEF mobile nutrition teams in accessible areas wereacutely malnourished, Iyer said, with 200 of those considered severe, the worst category.

Yemen's civil war between Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces and Iran-backedHouthis has sharply escalated after ithad largely been frozen in a 2022 truce.

Violence has flared along old front lines in recent weeks, including around the southwestern city ofTaiz, as the Houthis swept south along the Red Sea coast, prompting a humanitarian crisis with over 133,000 people displaced and some fleeing to Africa across the Red Sea.

Over the past three weeks, around 71,000 children have been forced from their homes due to the conflict, UNICEF said.

Every day, UNICEF is recording more cases of child malnutrition in areas it can access where internally displaced people have recently arrived.

However, UNICEF said this was only a snapshot of the situation unfolding across the country, where 2.2 million children under five are projected to be acutely malnourished this year, with over half a million projected to be suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva, Editing by Ludwig Burger and Xevi Fontdegloria)