A recent report by the World Food Program (WFP) painted a different picture for food security in Yemen. The organization predicted that the food security outlook until the beginning of 2023 will not be as bleak as it was in the past.
The WFP based its projection on the latest rates of food consumption in September, which showed that malnutrition decreased nationwide in Yemen after having increased during the previous four months.
The food-assistance branch of the UN clarified that the early warnings report for the period from October 2022 to January 2023 indicates that the food security outlook in Yemen is not likely to be as bleak as previously expected.
It revealed that its outlook for hunger in the war-torn nation is currently being updated with another revised analysis to be issued at the end of this month.
According to the latest food security data of the WFP, the prevalence of insufficient food consumption nationwide decreased slightly in September after increasing for four consecutive months.
Despite the improvement, more than half of Yemeni families reported inadequate food consumption, with hunger rates soaring in 16 out of 22 governorates.
According to the report, funding shortfalls have put the most critical humanitarian interventions at risk of being scaled back or shut down completely.
As of late September, the Food Security and Agriculture Cluster of the 2022 Humanitarian Response Plan was only 49% funded, and the Nutrition, Health, and WASH clusters were 32%, 64%, and 23% funded, respectively.
These clusters provide services that help prevent and treat acute malnutrition, including by supporting sanitation and health.
With recent flooding causing damage to water and sanitation systems --- likely increasing the risk of waterborne diseases --- reductions in access to health services will likely render households more vulnerable to the physiological impacts of concurrent high levels of acute food insecurity and contribute to increased rates of acute malnutrition in many areas.
In Marib, over 258,000 individuals will be left without healthcare in September 2022. Meanwhile, though WFP's school-feeding program resumed with the start of the new term in late July/early August, only around one third of the originally planned 1.9 million children will be reached in the current semester due to funding shortfalls.
