Yemen facing extremely high levels of malnutrition, UNICEF official says

With "the highest level of chronic malnutrition after Afghanistan, affecting 60 percent of under fives," Yemen is facing levels of acute malnutrition that are equal to or worse than those in Africa's Horn or Sahel, UNICEF's Yemen representative Geert Cappelaere said on Friday in London, AlertNet reports. "If you don't do anything about these incredible high levels of malnutrition, in the short term you may have more and more children dying. In the long term, the cost of inaction for a country like Yemen may be up to $1.5 billion a year," he said. According to AlertNet, "The figure comes from a World Bank estimate that the cost of failing to address malnutrition could be 2-3 percent of a country's GDP." Cappelaere "said that in some areas it had almost nothing to do with access to food, but rather to lack of access to drinking water or sanitation. He said bringing down malnutrition levels would require integrated investment in water, sanitation, nutrition, education, and health," the news service writes (Batha, 6/15).