Deformities, cancers terrifyingly increase among Yemeni children due to coalition weapons
SANAA, Dec. 10 (YPA) – The Secretary-General of the Yemeni Pediatric Society, Dr. Nora Nour Noureddin, has said: “Yemen has become a field of experiments for prohibited weapons that have caused the cases of fetal death and the congenital malformations among newborns.”
Dr. Nora, Professor of Pediatrics at the September 21 University of Medical and Applied Sciences, affirmed that the air, water and food of Yemenis have become polluted due to toxic gases resulting from weapons and forbidden germ bombs dropped by the US-backed Saudi-led coalition warplanes on Yemen.
She indicated that Yemen is suffering from the worst epidemic disaster, and called for documenting cases of congenital malformations in fetuses and placing them in a museum for scientific studies, noting that malnutrition diseases have killed tens of thousands of Yemeni children.
“Frankly, the health situation is very bad as a result of the lack of salaries for nearly five years, which negatively reflected on the deterioration of the living situation and diet of all middle- and low-income families,” Dr. Nora said.
Many diseases spread among the mother and the child together, and the diseases that had disappeared from the children’s circles returned to kill thousands of them during the past years of the war, she added.
Because of the war and the blockade, Yemen has become one of the worst countries in terms of malnutrition in the world. Half of Yemen’s children suffer from malnutrition of all kinds and degrees.
The United Nations recognized its report issued last November, that a Yemeni child under the age of five dies every 9 minutes due to the war, the lack of food, clean water and health care, and the deterioration of various basic services.
Yemen ranks first in acute and chronic malnutrition at the Arab level, and second globally in stunting and malnutrition diseases after Afghanistan.
UNICEF statistics for the year 2020 confirm that 7,400,000 people in Yemen suffer from malnutrition, including 2 million children under the age of five.
The World Food Program also indicated a significant increase in severe acute malnutrition rates by 16-22% during the current year, among children under the age of five during the past year.
The disaster is the fact that the United Nations and international organizations did not move a finger to stop the war.
Dr. Nora said that there are many common diseases that kill tens of thousands of children annually, foremost among them are malnutrition, meningitis, pneumonia, watery diarrhea, and measles. She referred that the absence of health care services contributed to the spread of these diseases.
The Ministry of Health in Sanaa stated in a report published last March that Yemen loses more than 265,000 children per year, due to major childhood diseases; and the lack of health services.
“It is a strange paradox that some of the old epidemic diseases that had disappeared and we used to read about them in scientific references returned and resurrected in Yemen again, such as diphtheria, which is known as (diphtheria) that killed many children,” Dr. Nora explained.
She added “What we are observing at the present time is very dangerous, from the birth of congenitally deformed children, and the terrifying spread of cancers of all kinds among children, including leukemia.”
Children, pregnant women and nursing mothers are at the forefront of those who pay the price and are most affected by various diseases, and the intervention of international organizations does not meet the minimum actual need, and has not contributed to reducing the diseases that are rising from year to year.
International organizations exploit the various sufferings of Yemenis, and their intervention is cursory and may be temporary, and they have no effect on saving children in Yemen because of spending international donations on marginal aspects of training, qualification and field surveys.
©YPA