Top member of the Supreme Political Council, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, has on Wednesday renewed his call for the lifting of the blockade on Yemen.
Al-Houthi posted a painful picture of a suffering Yemeni child on his Twitter account, commenting: “See how the situation of children in Yemen is.”
شاهد إلى أين اوصل الحصار أبناء الشعب اليمني#نعم_لفك_حصار_امريكا_لليمن pic.twitter.com/vH859tD877
— محمد علي الحوثي (@Moh_Alhouthi) January 6, 2021
This coincides with heightened fears that more Yemeni children will be affected in the coming months as a result of the war, blockade and pandemic.
On Monday, Reuters has reported on the case of a Yemeni child suffering from malnutrition, saying that “paralysed and severely malnourished, seven-year-old Faid Samim lies curled up on a hospital bed in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, having barely survived the journey there.”
“He was almost gone when he arrived, but thank God we were able to do what was necessary, and he has started improving. He is suffering from cerebral palsy and severe malnutrition,” said Rageh Mohammed, the supervising doctor of the Al-Sabeen hospital’s malnutrition ward.
Faid weighs only 7 kg (just over 15 lb), and his tiny, fragile frame takes up barely a quarter of a folded hospital blanket. His family had to travel from Al-Jawf, 170 km (105 miles) north of Sana’a, through checkpoints and damaged roads, to get him there.”
Unable to afford Faid’s medication or treatment, the family relies on donations to get him treated. Mohammed says malnutrition cases are on the rise, and impoverished parents are forced to rely on the kindness of strangers or international aid to get their children treated.
Al-Houthi’s tweet coincided with a statement by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Yemen warning of the mass deaths of hundreds of thousands of children in Yemen in the next few months if no urgent action is taken to prevent the disaster.
The Saudi-led blockade and war, which have been going on since March 2015, have exacerbated the situation of children in Yemen, where tens of thousands of Yemenis have been affected.
