Refugee children suffer malnutrition in Yemen

People who have fled fighting in the north of Yemen face malnutrition and the risk of a cholera outbreak, the United Nations has warned. Some 175,000 people have been driven from their homes in the middle eastern country by fighting between Yemeni troops and rebels in the northern Saada.

More than 10,000 people are staying in al-Mazraq camp in neighbouring Hajjah province and twice as many people have settled outside the camp. Children and women count for most of those made homeless because men tend to stay behind to protect their homes and to fight, a UN spokesman said. "Malnutrition is the greatest concern about displaced children," Thomas Davin, a regional chief for the United Nations' children's fund UNICEF, told Reuters news agency. Serious malnutrition, which can if left untreated, lead to death, is much more common among children who have fled Saada province.  Yemen in general, which is the poorest country in the Middle East, according to the BBC, already has very high levels of child malnutrition.

Some 250 children die from malnutrition daily in Yemen, according to UN figures. Six-year-old Faris al-Thawebi, cried in distress as a Unicef doctor examined him in Mazraq camp. The family had arrived in September from the Haiden district west of Sa'ada, but two months into his stay at the UN-run camp, Faris was still severely malnourished. So too his three-year-old baby sister. "They've been ill since they were born. I don't have any money and I can't read or write. I don't even know what my age is," Faris's father, Ali Mohsen al-Thawebi, told the Guardian newspaper.

The overcrowded situation in the camp also makes a cholera outbreak a worry for UNICEF because poor hygiene and overcrowding create perfect conditions for the potentially deadly disease. Not many of those living in the camps are used to washing regularly because water is scarce in Yemen and few use toilets, preferring to leave waste in the open."Hygiene is terrible, really, really terrible," Mr Davin said.

In the coming weeks, a new camp is expected to open in Yemen for the homeless and will be able to give shelter to between 10,000 and 12,000 people. "There is a plan for another camp to be built just next to this one (al-Mazraq), which is in the process of being built," Davin said, adding that the new camp might be expanded to accommodate more people if needed.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children