FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – March 15, 2017
Grant Pritchard, Interim Country Director for Save the Children in Yemen, said:
“By bombing and blocking Yemen’s main port – the country’s lifeline for essential supplies – Saudi Arabia and its coalition allies are preventing the delivery of food and aid by sea. On the ground, warring parties are detaining aid workers and hampering humanitarian access. This crisis is not an act of nature – it is man-made. Food and aid are being used as weapons of war.
“Our teams are seeing skeletal children on the brink of death, so hungry they do not even have the energy to cry. We are helping pregnant women who have starved themselves to feed their families, forced to choose between the living and the unborn. And we are treating babies who have been sick since birth with diseases that are preventable and easily curable with the right medicines.
“But right now the odds are stacked against us. We have had three shipments of life-saving medical aid delayed by the coalition so far this year – and our field teams tell us children have died as a result. The international community must do more to make sure aid for Yemen gets where it needs to go.”
ENDS
For more information about delays to Save the Children’s shipments of medical aid for Yemen see here
Recent visuals of children suffering from acute malnutrition are available for download: http://storycentral.savethechildren.org.uk/?c=45175&k=8cf8881b26
Media Contact
For additional information please contact Katharine Harris, National Senior Manager,Communications, Public Relations & Engagement:
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