Source: MIL-OSI Submissions
Source: Save the Children
Yemen is facing an alarming increase of people on the brink of hunger, with their numbers forecasted to rise from 2 to 3.2 million by the end of the year. The drivers of the food insecurity are the ongoing economic problems, the violence, a drastic reduction of funding, the COVID-19 outbreak which is hampering health and nutrition services, swarms of locust and increased outbreaks of other disease like Dengue.
Save the Children is working hard to reach the most vulnerable families, including those in hard to reach areas. Al Boriqa Mobile Clinic in Aden supported by Save the Children, provides life saving health services to 10,428 Yemenis who live in areas with no easy access to health centres.
Among the services provided in the clinic are nutrition services for severe acute malnutrition cases (SAM) and moderate acute malnutrition cases (MAM) for children under five years old and pregnant and lactating women. They now also screen for COVID-19 cases and communicate with the RRT (Rapid Response Team) for further investigation and referrals. Our team in the Al Boriqa Mobile Clinic is seeing an increase in the number of cases of Dengue and Malaria, and the health of some children who were initially getting better is deteriorating again.
Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, in the first quarter of 2020 staff at the health facilities faced several challenges. The shortage of personal protective equipment and people’s fear of COVID-19 led to a decrease in the number of patients seeking service, and the work of the mobile clinic was suspended during the months of April and May 2020.
About Save the Children NZ:
Save the Children works in 120 countries across the world. The organisation responds to emergencies and works with children and their communities to ensure they survive, learn and are protected.
Save the Children NZ currently supports international programmes in Fiji, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Laos, Nepal, Indonesia, Thailand, and Mozambique. Areas of work include education and literacy, disaster risk reduction, and alleviating child poverty.
