About five million people – or 47 percent of the population – are currently experiencing crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity (stage 3 and above).
Meanwhile, another 1.4 million people are trapped in the “emergency” and the number is expected to grow as the year progresses.
“Families are being pushed beyond their coping capacity by the combined effects of economic collapse, climate shock, disrupted livelihoods and declining humanitarian aid,” the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Program (WFP) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a joint statement.
The hunger is getting deeper
The lean season from June to September is expected to push the number of emergencies to 1.5 million.
Looking further ahead, the post-harvest period from October to December 2026 is unlikely to bring meaningful recovery with the number of people in emergency situations (IPC stage 4) expected to rise further to 1.8 million.
Food insecurity remains a major cause of Yemen’s high malnutrition burden after more than a decade of war between Houthi rebels and the internationally recognized government.
Reduced dietary diversity, poor household food consumption, limited access to key preventive nutrition services and deteriorating living conditions increase the risk of acute malnutrition, especially among pregnant and lactating women and young children.
Economic decline and aid cuts
Irregular wages, high food and fuel prices, reduced income opportunities and constraints on agricultural production limit families’ ability to meet even basic food needs.
About 60 percent of Yemeni households are at least partially dependent on agriculturebut harvesters face increasing pressure from extreme weather, pest outbreaks and disrupted supply chains.
At the same time, humanitarian food aid and humanitarian interventions in nutrition, health and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) are expected to sharp decliney because of critical funding gapsremoves support at the moment it is most needed.
A small child is tested for malnutrition at a clinic in Yemen.
Mobile teams reach underserved areas
Against this backdrop, WHO, in coordination with its local partners in Aden and Marib, is bringing health services directly to people in displacement camps to respond to rising malaria risks.
In the Al-Shaab camp in Aden, where many displaced families live in difficult conditions, health challenges are part of daily life.
Overcrowding, poor environmental conditions and limited access to services increase the risk of malaria and other vector-borne diseases, especially for women and children.
For 21-year-old Abeer Abdulwarith Mohammed Saeed, the challenges are all too familiar. “Sometimes, at night, a child will suddenly develop a fever, diarrhea or vomiting, and there are no emergency services available to us,” she said.
“If I, my husband or my children fall ill, we cannot get treatment because of our limited funds” she added.
‘We are healthy’
The teams implement a strategy, through mobile clinics that move across camps, to detect and diagnose cases early, especially in areas far from health services.
For Ms. Saeed and her family, the mobile team’s visit brought reassurance.
“The medical team helped us today with malaria and dengue tests for me and my children,” she said. “We waited for the results and thank God there was no malaria. We are healthy.”
Urgent funding is needed
The central UN aid organizations involved are calls on the international community to urgently scale up funding for humanitarian food aid, nutrition services, health, agriculture and resilience programming.
Without immediate, sustained and scaled-up action, millions of vulnerable people risk falling deeper into hunger, malnutrition and irreversible loss of livelihoods.
