By Nabil Alusefi, Correspondent TV channel AlAraby in Yemen.
Hunger in Yemen is threatening a whole generation. The humanitarian situation in Yemen is the worst in the world. Dozens of poor and hungry people are in every city and village. Five years of war and aerial bombardment turned Yemen into the poorest country in the world, experiencing the worst humanitarian crisis in its history.
While working on television reports on the “Al Araby” channel in Yemen, I repeatedly come across stories of humanity that I cannot bear. In the Aslam region of the Hajj province in northwestern Yemen, hundreds of hungry families cannot have any food at all. Most families have more than a dozen people. Some of them are forced to eat foliage in order not to die of starvation.
I share food with them when our team of journalists escorts people to the mountains where they collect leaves. This is a journey that requires children to travel long distances along high-paths. The taste of the leaves that people eat is very sour, that it is simply impossible to eat.
In addition, foliage components cause mass diarrhea in children under five years of age, who mostly die from either infections or starvation. The Aslam health center hosts hundreds of children with chronic exhaustion every day.
During our stay in the center of a barefoot man came with a child in her arms. He walked for more than three hours on the road to us, barefoot, hungry, exhausted, and carrying his child, who was on his last breath. And local doctors can not refuse to those in need. Meanwhile,the center has no medical potential.
The war caused the collapse of the healthcare system throughout Yemen. According to the UN, about 20 million people in Yemen are experiencing severe food shortages. Children die of hunger in the country every 10 minutes. And if the international community does not intervene in the humanitarian crisis in our country, we will all die in the near future. Help us! Nabil Alusefi Correspondent TV channel AlAraby in Yemen
(The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).