"In war-torn Yemen, malnourished children are struggling to survive as temperatures rise".
"There are never enough hospital beds for all the malnourished children across this poor and parched province. But this summer, even more families than usual had to be turned away from the bursting wards.
In Hodeida’s city hospital one afternoon, infants were crowded two or three to a bed. Their mothers and siblings sat slumped in the gaps in between. Wails filled the ward. Another two dozen children were waiting for space, a doctor said.
Twelve miles away, a rural clinic with 13 beds was uncomfortably still, the children silent, a telltale sign their bodies were wasting away. Malnutrition is widespread in Yemen. But a suffocating mix of high temperatures and humidity “had dramatically increased the number of cases,” said Mona Makki, a nurse there.
Reduced to “skin and bone” and cradled by their mothers on the clinic’s few beds, the children suffered from weak immune systems, she said. “When exposed to heat, that makes the cases even worse,” she added."
Kareen Fahim, Ali Al-Mujahed and Lorenzo Tugnoli report for the Washington Post October 12, 2023.
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