3-year-old Randa Starves As Yemen Aid Dries Up

Hajjah, Yemen, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Feb, 2022 ) :Crying and struggling to breathe, three-year-old Randa sits on a metal bed in a tent in northwest Yemen's Hajjah province, her weight similar to that of a healthy newborn.

Like millions across the war-torn country, and hundreds of children in the province, Randa is hungry.

She suffers from severe acute malnutrition, exacerbated by the desperate conditions at the Al-Khudash displacement camp she and her parents call home.

A seven-year-long civil war between pro-government forces and Huthi rebels has pushed the country to the brink of famine.

Hundreds of thousands are estimated to have died and millions have been displaced in what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

It has repeatedly warned that aid agencies are running out of funds, forcing them to slash "life-saving" programmes.

The UN last year appealed for $3.85 billion to pay for urgently needed aid, but just $1.7 billion was offered at a virtual pledging conference.

Randa, who now weighs just four kilograms (under nine Pounds), is among those paying the price.

"Medicine has not helped her," her mother, Saleha Nasser, told AFP.

Clinics have directed the family to a hospital in the capital Sanaa, some 150 kilometres (90 miles) southeast, "but we don't have the money to take her", Nasser said.