Yemen newborn twins battle malnutrition as war fuels hunger crisis

Seven-week-old twins Raghad Hassan and her brother Raad are being treated for severe acute malnutrition at al-Sadaqah hospital in Aden, after their family fled fighting in Yemen's south-west and walked for three days to reach the city.

The twins were born prematurely as fighting escalated in Yemen's civil war between Houthi rebels and government forces. When Houthi fighters reached their village in the Kahboub mountains, the family of seven fled amid bombs, missiles and drone attacks, the twins wrapped in blankets. They walked for three days before a driver gave them a lift on the fourth, their father, shepherd Bajash Ali Sagir Hassan, told the BBC.

According to their mother, Lina, the twins grew weaker on the road, suffering from cold and dust and worsening vomiting and diarrhoea. By the time they reached the hospital, one doctor described them as "just skin and bone". Raad was the sicker of the two, his ribs visible and his breathing rapid and shallow, barely larger than the nurse's hands as he was weighed and measured.

Bajash said the twins were fed twice a day, but sometimes he could give them only water because the war had pushed up the price of baby milk.

Care stretched thin

The malnutrition unit at al-Sadaqah has 22 beds, but staff said only 13 patients are admitted at a time — the most critical cases — because of shortages of international funding, staff and equipment. Dr Noor Mohammed said patients are lost because of conditions there, and that the hospital lacks ventilation machines and oxygen bottles. Children are sometimes readmitted within a week, or even the same day, because their parents cannot afford proper nutrition, vitamins or antibiotics.

A supervising nurse, Aisha Ragab, who fled the war herself in 2018, arranged for the twins to share a single bed after two could not be found. Within an hour they were lying together, with Lina feeding sips of fortified milk from a tiny bottle. Raad could not keep it down; asked whether she thought they would recover, Lina said quietly, "God willing."

Wider crisis

The United Nations says around 800,000 people can no longer receive lifesaving aid and more than 250,000 have been displaced since an informal ceasefire collapsed in the summer. Houthi forces have advanced along the Red Sea coast and cut off Taiz, Yemen's third-largest city, where the UN says civilians are at grave risk and short of food as prices soar. The internationally recognised government is fighting back with the help of Saudi air strikes.

Even before the latest escalation, the UN estimated that half a million Yemeni children would suffer severe acute malnutrition this year.

Bajash is now a shepherd without a flock, having left 10 sheep behind when he fled. With his twins under doctors' care, he looked after his three other children, all under five, who spent the night on the street outside the hospital.

Source: BBC World.