AMMAN – The U.N. children’s agency appealed Monday for an additional $92.4 million to help fight the coronavirus pandemic in the Middle East and North Africa, a conflict-battered region with the highest number of children in need anywhere.
Yemen is a top concern, said Ted Chaiban, the regional chief of UNICEF. After five years of civil war, half the health centers in Yemen no longer operate.
Two million children are malnourished, including 400,000 who suffer from severe acute malnutrition. “If you don’t get support to them every month, you have a 50% increase in the mortality rate among those children (with severe malnutrition),” Chaiban told The Associated Press. “It was already critical to address the needs of children in Yemen.