Cholera, malnutrition and COVID-19 devastate Yemen
“And to walk with a brother to meet his needs is dearer to me than observing i‘tikaaf in this mosque – meaning the mosque of Madinah – for a month.” (Al Tabaraani)
£100 – Provide essential treatment for malnutrition and cholera for 35 people.
£80 – Provide a hygiene and protection pack to last a family-of-seven for one month, including soap, masks, bleach, gloves, hand sanitizer, and cleaning products.
£75 – Provide a family-of-seven at risk of malnutrition with a nutritious food parcel to last one month.
£70 - Provide 25 people at risk of dehydration, disease and starvation, with fresh, clean drinking water.
For six long, brutal years, Yemenis have been ripped apart by war. The country has been wracked by the worst famine in a century, widespread cholera, and the most urgent humanitarian crisis in the world. And now, COVID-19 threatens to push Yemen over the brink.
The World Health Organisation predicts that more than half of the entire population of Yemen will contract coronavirus, and Doctors Without Borders has described the outbreak – which is killing over 1/5th of all patients – as catastrophic.
With half of health facilities destroyed by conflict, there are no tests available, and hospitals lack ventilators, oxygen, masks and other essential equipment to contain the outbreak. Yet, every day, 80 to 90 bodies are being lowered into graves after suffering coronavirus-like symptoms.
Crowded camps, no escape
Yemen’s healthcare system has collapsed to such an extent that eight out of ten coronavirus deaths happen at home. The few hospitals that accept patients are barely able to function.
80 per cent of Yemenis need humanitarian help. Millions who have been displaced by the conflict are living in crowded camps with no electricity, food, water, or hygiene facilities. Yet, critically, just as extra help is most needed, international funding has been cut.
The head of the United Nations Refugee Agency in Yemen, Jean-Nicolas Beuze, said: “Cases are multiplying fast while international aid agencies are being forced to abandon critical programmes. The coronavirus may be the last straw to break the camel’s back.”
Your help is urgently needed
Help us to bring Yemen back from the brink. Your support is urgently needed to prevent this devastating virus from brutalizing a population already struggling to cope with violence, displacement, cholera, and malnutrition.
We must act now.
Yemen can’t wait.
Donate now
Why give through Human Appeal?
Human Appeal has been changing lives through our projects in Yemen since 2014, and we have maintained a country office in the capital of Sana’a since 2016. The breakout of civil war in 2015 brought home the need for us to expand our operations and we have helped over 900,000 people during the course of the conflict, primarily through health projects and emergency food aid to tackle malnutrition.
As a sign of how need has grown since the start of the conflict, in the last quarter of 2019 more than half of the beneficiaries we supported worldwide were in Yemen.
Human Appeal’s work in Yemen
Human Appeal has been working in Yemen since 2014. Since the outbreak of the conflict, your donations have provided food, healthcare, and medical supplies to over 900,000 of the most vulnerable Yemenis.
24 million people are still in desperate need of humanitarian aid. Join us in continuing to provide vital aid in this deepening crisis.
This is Layla. She fled to Yemen’s capital, Aden, with her blind father and three remaining children to escape the anguish of war in Al-Hodaida. Tragically, Layla lost two of her precious children because of extreme malnutrition.
“My family of five now live on a farm, in a sheep pen. We have no protection from the heat and no mattresses to sleep on. Since my husband left us, I have been working as a home help to wealthy Yemeni women, but I only earn about $1 a day, which is not enough to cover even basic needs.
My children have only one lunchtime meal a day, with no breakfast, dinner or supper. We go to bed hungry and cannot even afford clean water to drink or nutritious fruit and milk.
I am afraid we will starve to death if somebody does not help us. I ask humanitarians to look at my condition, my children’s, and blind father’s. We have no one to support us or provide for us. I have children who will die of starvation, sickness and extreme heat if we do not receive help.”
