Newborn twins fight for survival as conflict fuels Yemen's hunger crisis
0 / 65
English
中文
Watch: Children in Yemen face homelessness and malnutrition as war rages From the day they were born, just seven weeks ago, twins Raghad Hassan and her brother Raad have been battling for survival.
（暂无翻译）
They came into the world prematurely, as fighting surged in Yemen's long-running civil war between Houthi rebel fighters and government forces.
（暂无翻译）
When the Houthis reached their village in the Kahboub mountains in south-west Yemen, their family of seven was forced to flee amid bombs, missiles, and drone attacks – the twins protected only by blankets.
（暂无翻译）
What followed was three days on foot heading for the port city of Aden.
（暂无翻译）
The twins' family walked for three days before being given a lift to Aden "It was very difficult," says their father, Bajash Ali Sagir Hassan, a softly spoken shepherd.
（暂无翻译）
"We didn't find cars or transportation.
（暂无翻译）
One kind person brought us here [on the fourth day] while others refused." As the family walked, the twins got weaker, according to their mother Lina. "They were exhausted… there was cold and dust.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
Their vomiting and diarrhoea got worse." By the time the newly homeless family arrived at al-Sadaqah hospital in Aden, the twins were barely clinging to life. "Just skin and bone," said a doctor, shaking his head, as he looked at their wasted limbs.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
Raad was the sicker of the two - his ribs visible and his chest heaving as he took rapid, shallow breaths. He was barely bigger than the hands of the nurse who carried him gently to be weighed and measured.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
Bajash looked on, worry etched on his face. He told us the twins were fed twice a day, but sometimes he could only give them water - after the war drove up the price of baby milk.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
The diagnosis came quickly - severe acute malnutrition. That can be as deadly as a bullet.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
More than 250,000 people have been displaced over the past three months, the UN says Malnutrition in Yemen is a crisis within a crisis - another frontline in a devastating civil war. Hunger did not arrive with conflict, but it's spreading with the latest bloodshed.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
The United Nations says around 800,000 people can no longer receive lifesaving aid and more than 250,000 have been displaced, after an informal ceasefire collapsed in the summer.
（暂无翻译）
Since then the Houthis have made a lighting advance along the Red Sea coast, and they have now completely cut off Yemen's third largest city, Taiz. The UN says civilians there are "at grave risk" and lacking food due to soaring prices.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
The internationally-recognised government is fighting back against the Houthis - or trying to - with the help of Saudi air strikes.
（暂无翻译）
Caught in the middle of all this are fathers like Bajash, fighting to get help for their children.
（暂无翻译）
We saw another mother with a malnourished baby being turned away.
（暂无翻译）
Raad was unable to keep down the fortified milk he was fed by his mother Lina We followed Bajash as he rushed through the corridors, trying to get the all-important admissions slip.
（暂无翻译）
He found an ally, a forceful supervising nurse, Aisha Ragab, who had run from the war herself, back in 2018. "I feel for them," she said, "because I have already lived through the situation myself."
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
Two beds could not be found, but Aisha was undeterred.
（暂无翻译）
"I will settle this by having the twins share a bed... so that we can save them. By God, I will convince them [the doctors]."
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
Within an hour the twins were lying on a single bed, their tiny bodies taking up little space.
（暂无翻译）
Lina was feeding them sips of fortified milk from a tiny bottle, but Raad could not keep it down.
（暂无翻译）
He was cradled in her arms - his eyes wide and his cheeks sunken. Asked if she thought her twins would recover, Lina replied quietly, "God willing."
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
Raghad, like her brother, was diagnosed as having severe acute malnutrition As we walked through the unit with its pink walls, some doors were padlocked shut.
（暂无翻译）
There are 22 beds, but staff told us only 13 patients were admitted at a time - the most critical cases - due to the lack of international funding, staff, and equipment. That's a bitter pill to swallow for Dr Noor Mohammed, a harried young doctor. "It's sad to say, but we lose patients [because of the conditions]," she says.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
"We don't have good equipment like ventilation machines, and oxygen bottles," she adds.
（暂无翻译）
"There are no good resources.
（暂无翻译）
A lot of laboratory investigations... it's very hard to do them."
（暂无翻译）
A recent flare-up in fighting has left civilians in the firing line.
（暂无翻译）
Even before the latest escalation, the UN calculated that half a million Yemeni children would suffer from severe acute malnutrition this year.
（暂无翻译）
Dr Noor Mohammed says families with no money or insurance depend on her hospital for treatment The malnutrition unit in al-Sadaqah hospital is a conveyor belt of suffering. As one severely ill baby leaves, another arrives. And some of those discharged are back all too soon.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
"Sometimes a child comes back to us after a week, or two days," says Dr Mohammed.
（暂无翻译）
"Sometimes it is the same day.
（暂无翻译）
They come back and we admit them and the story begins again."
（暂无翻译）
They return because parents cannot afford proper nutrition or vitamins or antibiotics. "Every child here, his parents came because they don't have anything," she tells me. "They don't have money or insurance.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
They are here because they can't afford a private hospital." She does her best for them, she says, and she cries for them. Bajash and his other children were forced to sleep on the street Many parents - like Bajash - are trying to outrun both war, and poverty.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
He is now a shepherd without a flock.
（暂无翻译）
When he fled, he had to leave 10 sheep behind. They were his only livelihood. As doctors monitored his twins, he cared for his three older children - all aged under five.
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
They lingered on a bench in hospital reception without toys, bedding or baggage of any kind.
（暂无翻译）
But they could not sleep there.
（暂无翻译）
So, they spent the night outside, on the street - one more family with war wounds that cannot be seen but will disfigure a generation. Additional reporting by Wietske Burema, Lee Durant and Suaad Al Salahi Houthi missile attack on Yemeni presidential palace kills five, minister says On Yemen's desert battlefield, a war with global consequences is being waged Children brave snipers and mortars to go to school near Yemen front line
（暂无翻译） （暂无翻译）
仅供学习使用，如有侵权请联系删除 · 查看原文